Cold Thermogenesis 8

Cold Thermogenesis 8

Readers Summary

Can we funnel the CT series into 15 concepts?

What is the main problem modern humans face?

What is the evolutionary bottleneck that drives this process?

Radical Theory #1: If our brains can rewire, then Einstein’s theories predict our biochemistry should be able to as well. My Leptin Rx and the modern cochlea implant definitively prove this in modern humans.

Radical Theory #2: Considering that 90{a7b724a0454d92c70890dedf5ec22a026af4df067c7b55aa6009b4d34d5da3c6} of the earth’s current biome lives in extreme conditions on our own planet today still, we might need to consider that what we think is “our normal environment” is not so normal for most of life on our planet or our evolutionary history. Life on Earth evolved in an environment much like we see on Titan today; in a deep ocean frozen solid at its surface with the capability of life buried deep with in it. The only escape was due to ejectants of water vapor from super heated water from underwater volcanoes. All these things are present today on Earth’s crust too. There is one major difference now between the two. We are a lot warmer today than when life began. There are others, but when one looks at Titan we see a frozen giant moon with a monstrous ocean beneath it.

All life on our planet came from the oceans first. We know this to be true as well. And because of this, studying extremophile forms of life here on earth today might explain the complexities of how biochemistry allows for life to exist at all in a thermoplastic environment.

What the bio-astrophysics found on Titan with the Cassini Solstice mission, may be a huge clue that life first adapted to extreme environments and then was naturally selected and adapted to a cyclic warming trend on our planet’s crust over time.

Our hominid species may have adapted during this warming trend, but the DNA we inherited came from animals that were cold adapted. Evolution uses epigenetics to determine adaptation to environments. We have discarded the strict definition of genetic determinism in the last ten years. We know today that the power of epigenetics dictates a lot more about newer generations adaptations than we even knew since the 1950s. The implications of this information now has to make us look at some of our own long standing assumptions about how living cells work in cold and warm environments to see how our cells react to a thermoplastic environment.

They may not have even made a big impact when hominids evolved 2.5 million years ago because by all geologic accounts it was still warm. But it remains possible that the impact could be a lot larger than we expect as well. We may not fathom this possibility but it is clearly in the realm of possibility.

The modern science of epigenetics shows that who we came from and what they faced has a direct biologic effect upon subsequent generations DNA and phenotypes. It is crystal clear today, but the biologic implications remain unexplored in all modern day literature. What is happening on Titan today may be like opening up a black hole back to a reality that used to be our own. The ability to see Earth at life’s evolutionary beginning is now a possibility.

Radical Theory #3: One of my readers pointed out recently he was confused by Dr. Gamble’s CT-2 video (below), when she said the normal pattern of sleep in a natural environment had two cycles. He wanted to know why her version and my version for sleep as written in my post Rx for the Leptin Rx were not congruent. It was a great question that really opens the discussion to the idea of evolutionary mismatches. These mismatches occur in many modern systems of biology and they are actually increasing in frequency and severity as time elapses. The reason is quite simple. Evolution is constantly getting faster as time goes on relative to the current state of our genome. Human creativity also constantly generates them with its new “modern technological advances” Consider Google glass as the next catastrophe we will face.

Why is this happening? Factor X is the evolutionary reason and Factor X was an evolutionary bottleneck that resulted in the natural selection of the Ancient Pathway (leptin-melanocortin system) of the mammalian brain. I think most humans are not really ambiently aware of how how basic circadian mismatches destroy our biology slowly via the “slow erosion of metabolic function.” This factor is the source of most of our neolithic diseases modern hominids face today. We can now measure these mismatches with simple blood tests. I laid this out in the Paleo Summit talk with Sean Croxton and in my many panel discussions at Paleo fx 2011. I strongly suggest you review them when they become available.

Radical Theory #4: Sleep and cold the environment, were our ancestors primordial condition and as such, this was evolutions starting point for life on our planet. This is why even today 90{a7b724a0454d92c70890dedf5ec22a026af4df067c7b55aa6009b4d34d5da3c6} of the living biome on Earth remains in a freezing cold environment. Humans believe because they are the penultimate species of evolution there current environment is a more important factor than it really is.

That is a very faulty assumption. Life on this planet evolved from the deep oceans to land. Therefore the biochemistry that dictate’s modern energy generation can not be generalized to all life forms on this planet. It can be studied on those mammals, animals, and bacteria that have undergone natural selection to a warmer climate and have assumed a warm adapted diet. Just because we use and live this way, has no bearing on what we evolved from, or if energy generation is somehow more efficient or less efficient in a different thermoplastic environment. Sleep is the most important part of our biology for Optimal living in my opinion. I begin every hack I do in the clinic using sleep as the basis.

Radical Theory #5: Evolution speeds up as time progresses on. This is a known biologic fact. The faster this epigenetic evolution occurs the greater risks we face at the hand of mismatches. We may then begin to see the real causes of why diabetes might occur.

Radical Theory #6: Modern epidemics are not caused by genetics, but by epigenetics! This is also a medical clinical fact that gets lost in the modern scientific literature but you would never get that from reading the literature on diabetes. In fact, the totality of the diabetes literature would have you believe the exact opposite. This is a neolithic thought that has hurt all modern diabetics and is at the seat of why modern medicine has failed to find a cure.

Mother Nature has a cure for insulin resistance in all eutherian mammals. That is cold exposure of there peripheral nervous systems. The stimulus to this pathway begins when the mammal is exposed to a high dietary carbohydrate diet that is found in long light cycles on this planet. This is how the gut senses the environment and this signals are transmitted to the brain via the vagus nerve. Modern biochemistry books and biochemists stop here…They immediately go to what we know about energy generation in cells. But I am focusing in on what they have failed to realize.

When dietary carbohydrates are high it stimulates the eutherian mammal to begin to upregulate omega 6 content into every cell membrane of their body slowly through the autumn while temperature falls. It speeds up as the temperature drops in winter. This process is completely independent of dietary sources as I laid out in CT-3. Why does this occur in all mammals? Because to cell membranes to function in cold weather it requires all land based mammals from cold adapted ancestors to have an EFA ratio of 4:1 for optimal signaling. The reason is tied to mitochondria. Mitochondrial function improves in colder conditions. In water based mammals who are cold adapted, like whales, walrus, and seals they face steeper temperature gradients in the water that require a much lower EFA ratio (essential fatty acids) in their cell membranes to function properly.

This lowered ratio of EFAs also changes the biology of adipocyte biochemistry. It favors the accumulation of surface fat but not of visceral fat. Visceral fat is used to burn first to maintain core temperature in these animals. In land based cold adapted mammals like the polar bear the same is true. When they emerge from their den in spring they are shredded of all visceral fat and no longer insulin resistant, and have the biggest and strongest muscles they will have all year. Their body composition is at its best at this time. They accomplish all this without needing any exercise or food to do so.

This is in counter distinction to modern man beliefs. Why is this? The question is more complicated than the answer. The answer is again, simple. Modern man is further down the evolutionary path and a product of a faster evolution. He uses all the parts of the physical world to generate energy to his advantage. This means his evolutionary development was the product of a sped up epigenetic process for some reason. In essence, epigenetics also speeds up as time elapses. This allowed for the human brain to develop faster than our body plan because our diet radical changed from our immediate ancestors, the chimpanzee.

This ability caused two simultaneous evolutionary adaptations to occur simultaneously. As our brain expanded, our guts shrunk in length. We only needed a smaller gut when we become adapted to eat predominantly fat and protein from animals. A diet high in fat and protein was also used to fuel encephalization of hominids. Larger brains meant we needed pelvic changes to become bipedal and it also extinguished the need to hibernate. Hibernation needs were shrunk into our sleep cycle during stage 3 and 4 sleep. As we became smarter we became able to control our environment. This is how a sped up epigenetic plan set up modern man to become more susceptible to many biochemical mismatches.

When our recent ancestors lost the ability to hibernate, they also lost their best way to fight insulin resistance. Cold shreds us of fat normally. Since those ancestor mammals ate carbohydrates in a proper circadian cycles, purely controlled by their seasonal growth, the biochemical systems in those mammals readily adapted to these new states without much problem. This biologic adaptation required alteration of the leptin receptor to function with higher levels of cytokines present. It appears natural selection also made adjustments to liver biochemistry and bioenergergenics to mirror those changes made in the brain.

Every eutherian mammal born on this planet up until 2.5 million years ago had to live by the dictums of their environment. When hominids evolved, much later, this situation radically was altered. Hominids remain the only mammal on the planet who can 100{a7b724a0454d92c70890dedf5ec22a026af4df067c7b55aa6009b4d34d5da3c6} control its own environment. This allows our species to create mismatches at great speed, as our brain continued to develop over the last 2.5 million years. This trend dramatically speeds up all our chemical clocks in every cell of our body that is controlled by circadian biology. This is well known by modern science.

The Nobel Prize of 2009 tied this all to telomere lengths in our cells. All mammals have circadian signaling hardware in their brains that wire directly to the cell cycle machinery in every single cell of their bodies. This means that modern hominids are the most sensitive mammal to any circadian mismatch compared to their ancestors. Moreover, since they have the most advanced brain in the mammalian family, they are subjected to the greatest risk of neolithic diseases due to these mismatches. Humans get diseases that no other wild animal gets for this reason. Humans get autoimmune disease when our most recent ancestors, the chimp can not. They do not have zonulin and we do. The reason is because our guts are adapted to different diets that lead to our encephalazation. Animals domesticated by humans suffer the same fates as we do, ironically. Wild mammals tend not to get these issues because they live by the rule that Mother Nature determines for them in their own selected environments.

The ultimate paradox of modern hominids is that they evolved the ability to live on a warm adapted diet and in a warm environment, but that they retain the cold adapted biochemistry buried in their brains even though they do not need to use it presently. Evolution has not extinguished this ability for a very good reason, in my view. One reason is that the geologic record shows that our planet undergoes cyclic cooling and warming over longer epochs. This will keep the pathway active epigenetically over thousands of years. The main reason it has not been extinguished in my opinion, is that this ancient pathway determines ultimate survival of the mammalian species and it was vital at one time in evolutionary history. Modern hominids have an advanced nervous system, but they still are tied to the evolutionary family they come from long ago. They are not divorced from the rules of Mother Nature even though they act as if they are. This ties modern humans directly back to Factor X. The paradox is that they remain blind to it even today.

Radical Theory #7: Since modern hominids are unaware of the thermoplastic nature of their own biochemistry, they have never controlled for it in any modern biochemical study or study on nutrition. biology does not realize mitochondria function can be improved by cold surface temperatures. This is why neurosurgeons use cold in head trauma cases where the brain is swollen. The brain has the highest density of mitochondria in it so when it swells for any reason it is because either electron transport has slowed or because pseudohypoxia or frank hypoxia has developed. Pseudohypoxia is how hibernation begins in most mammals. This means that any assumptions made in biochemical dogma now needs to be questioned. The hints of these paradoxes are found in NASA astronauts, the Sherpa abilities, Vasper Technology, Russian Winter Olympic dominance, Lance Armstrong’s ability to beat cancer and win 7 races, Michael Phelps eight gold medals in one Olympics, Wim Hof’s amazing abilities, and the use of cold in human transplantation harvesting, and modern neurosurgical procedures bring these paradoxes to life.

They show us today they are not paradoxes at all. As we gain wisdom, we see the magic in things because our senses grow sharper. Reality is that which, when we stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. These “paradox” remain abilities that evolution built into our ancestors and that were passed down into our genome and hardwired into our brain for a reason. We remain blinded to it because few modern humans live in this environment today. Today this remains completely unstudied as our population, while they get more sick and mediocre with each passing decade. Elite athletes are the first humans to push these boundaries and to open our eyes to this possibility that this may exist. We are in inning one of this ballgame right now.

Radical Theory # 8: Modern life and its technology is as bad to us as a vegan or SAD diet. Lab results we draw on people show this. Cortisol patterns and hormone panels are a mess in humans when they are studied. Moreover, eating an ancestral paleolithic diet is a better choice than others, but it can hide the cellular effect of stem cell depletion by other forms of modern circadian mismatches. technology use at night is an easy one. Modern paleo’s make this mistake way to often.

The risk of a Paleo diet for them is that the diet is so good in some respects that it could blind your consciousness that you might be depleting your life force at the very same time. You will see this in an altered redox potential. This will show up when disease develops in the back half of your life span. This implies that what you think is really safe………may not be safe at all. Light after sunset from technology is as bad as eating the wrong diet for our Ferrari engines and our brains because it destroys the cortisol diurnal rhythms. And it means that your ultimate proof wont come until its too late for reversal………unless you prove it to yourself today by testing.

Radical Theory #9: Modern humans cannot out exercise/supplement bad choices from diet or from technology. Modern life is plain stressful and can hurt us even if we remain oblivious to it. Moreover, just eating an ancestral template, while over exercising like mad and eating safe starches 24/7, is not justified by your activity level. If you also play on you computers, iPhone, and ipad all night long, and think it has no biologic consequences to your stem cells is a neolithic thought that just might kill you early.

Trying to get all cute and use food and supplements to hide bad decisions won’t work either. Just increasing resveratrol, curcumin, and metformin won’t allow you to “out supplement” poor choices. Exercise must be hormetic and within our circadian cycles too. If it’s not, you will become a dead marathon runner or a ex-NFL player with a short life span who people wonder why and how that body crashed so fast? You can’t fool your telomeres, but you can fool yourself with your thoughts or “feelings”. The quality of your health is a summation of great decisions consistently. These decisions are all based upon the quality of your thoughts presently

Radical Theory #10: Your modern beliefs are usually the cause of your ultimate decline. Become fully aware that the human mind is a wonderful servant but usually is a horrible master. This will be a tough one for you to swallow because it was for me; but it is an ultimate truth. We are often our own worst enemy. This is why we often why we see success in going against the grain in Wall Street, Medicine, and in fish, like salmon. Our community must beware of this rule. The paleo tribe are experts at using modern technology to help it move forward, but if it is not applied correctly it might make you a good looking corpse with no stem cells when your telomeres are too short to change it. I do not want you to believe me. On the contrary, I want you to test me! You can check my theory easily yourself. Draw your own telomere test right now at Spectracell labs and test your own dogma.

Radical Theory #11: Cold adapted mammals can do things warm adapted ones can’t because at extremes chemistry, physics, and biology change when the temperature is colder. All biochemical reactions slow down in cold so Mother Nature responded to this environmental challenge by speeding up epigenetics. This is where Factor X plays its largest role in mammalian biology to compensate for the slowing of biochemistry to speed up reproduction for survival. 90{a7b724a0454d92c70890dedf5ec22a026af4df067c7b55aa6009b4d34d5da3c6} of life on this planet is cold adapted as we speak today. Our anthropocentric point of view has resulted in the classification of cold-adapted organisms as extremophiles, even though environments of permanently cold temperatures (around 0°C) abound on Earth, especially when one considers that these include not only the polar and alpine regions, but also deep-sea waters.

Geek Alert: Psychrophiles, both prokaryotic and eukaryotic, have successfully colonized these cold environments and are able to grow efficiently at sub-zero temperatures. This adaptation requires a vast array of structural and physiological adjustments in order to counteract the reduction in chemical reaction rates due to the low temperature of the habitat. Most scientists study human physiology in mesophilic environmental conditions. This is a big problem. The reason is that humans have completely different abilities in cold and the resultant physiologic changes are often 180 degrees opposite that one would expect. This fact has blinded many scientists and physicians to some deep realities about human biology. Recently, fish have been found in our polar seas that are believed to be over 10,000 years old.

Organic Biochemist Geek Alert: Temperature is one of the most important environmental factors for life as it influences most biochemical reactions. Low temperatures slow down and strongly inhibit chemical reaction rates catalyzed by enzymes, the ‘work- horses’ of cell metabolism. The effect of temperature on chemical reactions is basically described by the Arrhenius equation: k = Ae -Ea/RT , where k is the rate constant, A is Ea is the so-called activation energy, R is the gas constant (8.31 kJ mol ~1) and T is the temperature in kelvins. Accordingly, any decrease in temperature will induce an exponential decrease of the reaction rate, the extent of which depends on the value of the activation energy. The thermodependence of the activity can be approximately expressed by the Q10 value that is normally close to 2- 3. This is the main factor preventing the growth, at low temperatures, of non-adapted organisms. So biochemistry of cold says we should have slow growth patterns based upon the biochemistry. I told you earlier that evolution has sped up tremendously as time has gone on. So the question remains is, how did evolution overcome slower growth? Since the cell cycle was slowed by cold it sped up epigenetics to compensate for the slower growth. That is the basis of Factor X. It is the most important part of my theory because it is why the human brain was naturally selected for in a mismatched environment. It is an evolutionary factor by itself.

Radical Theory #12: The Ancient Mammalian Pathway naturally selects for the cold adapted Epi-paleo diet in all cold adapted eutherian mammals. To access this food source their nervous systems were adapted to remain insensate to pain after and adaptation period. This period differs across species but it is present even in humans after two weeks of peripheral surface cold sensation.

The best food source then for a cold adapted mammals biochemistry would be a ketogenic version of the paleolithic diet (Epi-paleo Rx) that has a high omega 3 content. The reason is simple. More omega 3’s are needed in cold environments to provide for accurate cell membrane signaling due to increased double bounds in their chemical structures of DHA.

VLC Warning: VLC in a warm adapted world has serious limitations. Be aware of them.

Paleo Diet with Metcons: carries even larger risks for the modern human.

Radical Theory #13: The leptin receptor is primordially a cold based electron counter for nutrients from foods. I think it evolved the ability to function in warm environments as mammals evolved onto land and took the planet over. Our earliest ancestors however began in the cold polar seas and on cold polar land masses. The biochemistry we know today in textbooks only represents the warm adapted mammalian pathways, and as such, are not complete in my view.

Training Fiction: Carbs are mandatory. The work of Volek, Phinney, Attia, and many others are pulling the veil back that ketosis is most efficient mammalian fuel in the cold, and not carb loading. Carb loading is a thought born of only understanding the warm adapted mammalian pathways. There are numerous examples of athletes using the cold adapted pathways having superior performance to the warm adapted pathways. The issue is that too few have decided to access it because it takes 24-36 months to reach those peak levels. The Sherpa’s remain the best example of this in today’s modern world. They have been extensively studied by NASA.

This blind spot needs to be studied in depth by modern day scientists who are not just elite coaches. Burning fat (FFA) actually increases our VO2max and proton flow when the ancient pathway is induced. This information is directly in counter distinction to published data because we remain unaware of the cold adapted pathways in humans. It is currently unstudied, but we have numerous examples of humans with exceptional performance in cold environments that few can explain until now.

At extremes, biochemistry changes in nature for our benefit. Evolution has a plan for this because it tapped it many times before. REALIZE THAT modern trainers are oblivious to this therefore they regurgitate what is best from the literature that is based upon mammals who are warm adapted eating a warm adapted diet! Can you say major mismatch! The best example of this today is the technology of Vasper which can not be explained by the published data in modern exercise physiology books. This should be a huge clue that we are missing some major factors. Vasper is a known entity in NASA research. Vasper has licensed the NASA technology generated from the Sherpa’s in the 1970’s.

Radical Theory #14: Why do humans remain blind to all this? They never face a true winter any longer as do other wild mammals. Behavioral adaptation is most important for the survival of human species. It includes e.g., well heated houses, good thermal insulation of clothing, warm vehicles and short exposures to cold. In fact, behavioral adaptation can work so well, that no physiological adaptation is developed in winter, as shown in young urban residents. These neolithic creations are why we do not see the metabolic benefits of this pathway in modern humans often. When modern humans become aware of them and their benefits they may consider building a small part of their current environment for cold thermogenesis.

Modern humans may find that when they cold adapt it will help treat diseases due to mismatches in circadian biology.
Warm clothes and buildings are neolithic creations that kept us in the dark about the ancient pathways benefits. Wild mammals can’t do what our brain allows us to do. Mismatches are not just not good for humans in our modern world where it constantly seems like it is summer time due to artificial light and 24/7 access to carbohydrates.

Radical Theory #15: Neolithic diseases of aging is total cellular chaos……health is perfect cellular order, in between is cellular mediocrity. We need to decide are searching for optimal or not. Optimal requires a cold adapted physiology………..sub optimal is found on the pathways in most modern biochemistry books.

I have a question. I’ve been doing CT cold baths for 3 1/2 weeks now. I’m having feet pain in the tub for the last 15 min of my 45 min 50-55F bath. For the first 30 minutes I’m good to go, some shivering sometimes but then my feet hurt from just being cold. When I get out everything is a lovely cherry red. I’ve had cold hands & feet since childhood-so I’m assuming it’s related to that but I’m wondering do I push through or back off?

Every one of these CT blogs just blows me away! Thank you from the bottom of my soon to be cold adapted heart. I now live my life to find new ways to get cold adapted. The daily baths, a cooling vest, kiddie pool in back yard, and I’m sure I will come up with more…just give me some time.

Just awesome! Regarding the VLC warning, I have problems everytime I get keto…and they are mainly at night. If I eat my carbs in the morning, I still have anxiety or other issues at night. Any suggestions? Everything has improved SO much though and this is just one tweak I need to figure out.

@Brenda the keto version of the paleo diet works best in cold…….not in warm. Thos who eat this way and remain warm will have bad body comp but keep their stem cells intact. The news is worse for the non keto paleo diet with metcons…….

I have a question about ketosis. I have just started using Ketostix and find that eating even very small amount of hard cheese (2-3T in a day) will dump me out of ketosis. Since cheese is very high in fat, this doesn’t really make any sense. Is this normal for other people or is this some unique personal metabolic effect?

@Cu you can but in cold you do not need too…….a polar gets ripped by hibernating. A human gets quite healthy improving their sleep as well. Become cold Dark and sleepy and watch your life improve. I tell everyone now I am boring……because this is how I roll. In Austin I was dying for sleep recovery. Took me a week to get back together.

After studying wildlife in the artic there is a catepillar that has adapted because of the short growing season to freeze itself over the long winter and then thawe itself out in the spring with out any side effects..except one, most catepillars only live one season, this catepillar lives an incredible 10 years, the animal kingdom has not forgoten its pathway,they embrace it as should we.

I just realized I’ve survived the 1st 1/2 of spring seasonal allergies w/o a single problem. I’ve been at it 8wks – pretty positive that CT is the reason why! this is the first time I’ve been allergy free in my life! wondering if now of this works on severe allergies to cats too?

With almost summer-like temps, it is more challenging to get tub water at a good temp for CT without lots of ice. Thus, I have migrated to spot CT w/ my Ice-Brix. Also, began soaking my feet in sub 40 degree water for 30 min. (surprisingly easy and feels good). Given the high number of nerves in our feet, how much of a CT benefit can I expect?

@Shinkin, hubby and I have been on the reset since 2/21 and both have normally horrible allergies and sinus issues, awful gunk coming out our noses in the shower in the a.m….. NORMALLY. NORMALLY when hubby is in a room with cats and dogs his eyes start to water in mere minutes. NORMALLY. Since the reset, heads have cleared up, no more gunk, and hubby spent hours in a room with cats and dogs and only later realized he didn’t have an allergic reaction.

So…. yes I am thinking it is the reset, as it’s the only thing we’ve both done differently! Life-changing! I bet it will work on your cat allergies too

I was diagnosed with otosclerosis in my right ear many years ago. I decided not to treat it as it was not severe. After 10 months of paleo and 6+ wks of CT I think i am hearing better in that ear. Is this possible? I will see an audiologist and find out if there really has been improvement.

I just watch the sunset up here in Toronto , Canada & this morning seen the sun rise for the first time in maybe twenty years of working night/afternoon shifts {No More !!!}. I transfer to a day position & have been laughing all morning … everyone thinks I’ve gone mad , but I never felt better .

I’m back to CT today with a cold bath, 55 degrees, 30 minutes, after a protein/fat meal (eggs and beef). I’ve had a cold so stopped the CT but now I’m hoping the CT will help me get rid of this cold. Hoping to wake up better. Thanks Dr. Kruse.

Jack, I live in Florida, the temps are 70-90 already, pool water is 85. Water comes out of the spigot at 80 (which to me is “cold” because I have been taking very hot showers for years.)

I am eating low carb, only adding in dairy a bit to get a little in. I have only been trying to get colder water a bit, not worked down to the 55 degree tub yet. But thanks for addressing this, because I was wondering a couple weeks ago if trying to cold adapt when it’s 85 degrees here was going to be another mismatch of biology.

So I am guessing that I should be trying to simulate Autumn here, and as I slowly cold adapt, I should be slowly cutting back carbs? To the point that once I am able to do the 3-5 times per week ice bath, I should at that point be VLC? Is VLC <25? Am I ok with this 25-50 present range? I don't really want the carbs, they just make me anxious.

Jack, this is such a wild concept, is anyone else talking about this? Think of all the other systems, and rhythms in our body we just dont know about? The possibilities are endless.

Two things though, i want more info on. Polar bears, that you mention, are they really their strongest after hybernation? Cant people argue they lose all their fat because they dont eat for 6 months, and anyone would have similiar results?

And the michael phelps example, yea, he is in a cold pool all day every day but he burns 20k calories a day. If he was in a warm pool, or running to burn that many calories he would have the same results no?

@Ian The key link for Phelps, Armstrong the Sherpa’s and astronauts is they all use cold in some fashion but none of them optimize it……..My point is that we have this pathway built into us all for an evolutionary reason. I think I know what the reason is…….and by three experiments I did on myself all tested that theory. So far every human I have used it on has seen results……..that tells me it is in us and we rarely tap it. As ofr Polar bears…….they shred their fat and their muscles are at their peak when they come out of the Den……..the cold increases them while they shred their fat. The same thing happens to humans who sleep well and who cold adapt.

I have been trying to get cold adapted. I am pretty successful at face dunks. Cold showers less so. My last session, I was successful at bringing my cold well water spray up to my waist but no further. After that session, I have been chilled and have not desired to do any CT training. The idea just does not set well. I had a stroke 2 Octobers ago, and I was hoping the CT would force nerve growth in my brain stem as well as help my diet. Jack have you any stroke victims reporting any benefits?

Thanks for this post. Every few years I write a letter to my children when I find out something that I did not know when they were growing up. I will use parts of this in my letter. Perhaps someone will take it to heart.

I have been using a combo of cool baths and altitude. The results seem unreal since I haven’t been doing any exercise. After the 3rd altitude and two weeks of 3xweek coolbaths @70 deg. I had to exert myself walking rapdily up an incline I dependably take twice a year. This time there was absolutely no effort involved. I even ran up 2 flights of stairs that I used to struggle with. I even tried it twice to check it out. That same evening I went back up the mountain and was amazed that I had energy to do it even with a full workday that I hadn’t done in the last 4 months. Remember I am 70 yo. I did my usual hour walkabout after my pro and fat meal then drank 2 glasses of icewater. Just as i was going to catch the tram someone stopped me to talk. The windchill was probably 20 degrees and after the icewater I began to shiver and finally got away to get on the tram. The next day I had massive body pain and took a couple of doses of ASA. Am I right that this was mostly a toxic dump of inflamation? Because the morning after that it was gone.
Two days later I went up again. Each time the HR remained as before but this time I rehearsed singing 3 of my songs and later started a breath exercise at about 1/2 the rate. During this time I had more lightheadedness and dizziness which continued off and on after I came down. Did i dump too much co2? I have excellent breath support and a good lung capacity. Or again was this a symptom of toxin dump? I broke my diet schedule and had hot tea with butter and figured the caffeine might help. Any suggestions of what to do or what to read would help me make adjustments to what I’m doing. I’ve been using the altitude and CT alternating. Should I be using the CT when I get the body pain even if it’s the same day? Thanks. sorry for the length.

Thanks for your willingness to share. I have been “paleo for a couple of years, and have been getting stricter with my diet as time goes on. I have either beef heart or beef liver 2-3 times a week for breakfast, barely cooked in coconut oil. I sleep in a blacked out room with the windows open in the winter and AC in the summer. I have been a barefoot water skier for 20 years and the best months to go are March, April, May, and September, October, and November. Flat water is needed, and many times we have the lake to ourselves during these months. We wear dry suits, and have coolers of hot water to put our feet and hands in after being in the lake. Very exuberating to be skiing on the water at 45 mph. It really makes you feel alive. I have been working out 3-4 times a week with P90x, I like the variety. I also do Tabata sprints once or twice a week. I have been trying something new that only takes a few minutes. It’s called vascular occlusion training. I put tourniquets below my knees, at the top of my thighs, and on my armpits. I then do some whole body squats, presses, curls, etc with very light weights for on about 10 to 15 minutes. Then I lay in a cold bath with ice on my stomach. I have been watching the Michael Palin series Himalaya recently. The sherpas in episodes 4 and 5 are amazing. They are carrying 80 lb. basket packs up to Mount Everest base camp, wearing shorts and flip flops. They don’t look like they could weight over 150 lbs.
Thanks for the information on Cold Thermogenesis, I think that has been the missing part of my life style for optimal health.

@Scott Jenkins the vascular occlusion to CT is a precisely what Vasper does. NASA uses this in the space station for astronauts. I think you are doing it correctly. Add CT and I bet your cold tolerance goes up. Soon you may not need a wet suit. What the Sherpa’s can do is nothing short of amazing……….

@Desia I dont not know because I have not used it for this. But as I have said on my forum the real mechanism of CT is to reduce cytokines to extremely low levels. This would destroy your HS CRP. IN FH the inflammation and oxidation potential of the serum is the biggest issue and not the LDL level. If I had FH I would certainly be CTing like a mad man and trending my HS CRP over a few years.

@Scott Jenkins I’ve been doing occlusion training too. It’s been pretty astonishing. I’ve put over an inch on my arms in about 2 months. Now if only I could figure out a way to work in the cold and the occlusion… Oh wait, that’s Vasper.

Interested in your comments about cold adaption and physiology of lactate levels as it pertains to this quote about Michael Phelps. Is this a function of CT/Cold Adaption and if so, what is the mechanism? Have you tested your levels after intense exercise? Seems like I see references to this in Vasper’s materials as well.

“Low Blood Lactate Level – In simple explanation, lactic acid is produced by human body in muscle cells during exercise. Accumulation of lactic acid occurs when the supply of oxygen to the cells is limited because the muscle cells are working so hard. So, indirectly, the less lactic acid one has, the better he can perform in his next race. A US researcher specializing in swimmer physiology, has done some test on Micheal Phelps. Even after swimming, Phelps’ lactate count was 5.6 (5.6 millimoles of lactate per liter of blood). How about other swimmers? Out of 5,000 other competitive swimmers being tested, all of them has level more than 10. In other words, the uncommon low number of lactate is so significant in Phelps’ body. His muscles recover faster than almost everyone after workout and race. This uniqueness has enabled him to compete so many events within such a short time, yet breaking records, one after another. In Beijing Olympic alone, he has swum more than 25 miles and over 1,000 laps at Water Cube, including preliminary and semifinal heats.”

@Kevin it is a hormetic effect of low O2 tension in the muscle that stimulates mitochondrial biogenesis It is a hormetic affect additive to the cold. But cold thermogenesis in and of itself also reduces lactic acid production……and it crescendos after 24 months of training…….this is why Lance and Phelps are really special…..unlike the rest of athletes they took the Pathway to its limit. Too bad they did not eat for the pathway because I believe there is more performance North of what they did.

“When people reach exhaustion, their muscles build up acid, which causes the muscles to stop contracting. But Armstrong’s muscles produce about half as much acid as the average person’s muscles do when they get fatigued. This allows him to recover much faster than other people.”

Again, a reference to lactic acid levels 1/2 of his peers. Cold Adaption? Seems like another marker that could be tested, yes?

I am also having issues with my skin adapting too fast. I already use compression and the ice won’t get my skin below 65 degrees now. I used to have take the ice out because it was going below 50 in the beginning. Now how do I get my skin in that 50-55 degree range again since I am already using compression? Quite amazing at how we adapt!

Jack Kruse Says:
The best food source then for a cold adapted mammals biochemistry would be a ketogenic version of the paleolithic diet that has a high omega 3 content. The reason is simple. More omega 3’s are needed in cold environments to provide for accurate cell membrane signaling due to increased double bounds in their chemical structures.

@Jan Nuts, good fats like Avacado’s, olive, olive oils……are human sources of 06 that are not compromised. Humans should also eat animals that are pastured to have an 4:1 level. Mammals eat animals with the proper EFA ratio’s. Modern humans do not.

Dr. would it be ok to do CT with the Bulletproof Rapid Fat Loss Protocol?

Also, did .2ml of 5% progesterone cream for 14 days last month and told you I gained 3lbs in a few days on it and was agitated. Now I have breakthrough bleeding 3 days after stopping my period (it is light). Is this from CT, progesterone, or the pregnenolone? Not sure if I should do the Tri-est & progesterone this month or what?

Dr Kruse, thanks for your response, and ALL your responses! I use two pair of very tight lycra/cotton bicycle shorts (that I’ve modified to hold the ice between.) Compression enough?

Bit of a false credit to my claim. I went from using my homemade water/rubbing alcohol icepacks to store-bought “ice-cube-like” sheets this past week. Today I switched back, and I’m down back to 54 degrees. So a ways to go yet. However, there are obvious signs that I’m becoming more cold-adapted. For instance, before CT two months ago I used a down comforter,a second comforter, flannel pjs and sheets, and fuzzy socks and was still cold at night. Now, I use a single sheet in a colder room and have slept like a rock this past week.

Dr. Kruse, your writing makes me think of Mozart, the way the brilliant music flowed out of him so fast. I mean this sincerely and as a compliment: if you would hire someone to edit your writings you seriously might just change the world!

@Scott Sterling. I am not interested in an editor, but I do have one now…..I think. But they have changed some blogs already but no one is reading the old one’s they changed. I write them and post them. This is a hobby for me. I help and change people in my clinic. I have a duty to them. I post here what I am finding. If people want help they can find it here among the spelling errors and grammar issues. If you focus in on the small things you lose on the big things in life…….Evolution is not an easy process either. Those who adapt to things they dont like, win and live…….those who don’t, die. Its the user’s choice to focus on the small things of the big things. Since I have been doing this for 8 months I think I have been doing something correctly, based upon how many are coming and the email’s I get. I do the best I can.

If you want perfectly executed blog posts without information that can change your life, there is a lot of bloggers out there in our community to choose from. They are great at reviewing studies that have no impact on making you optimal or fixing your issues. Some of them do not even take comments, more less answer them all. If you want optimal you’ll deal with the small stuff here. I make no apologies. I am a busy person.

After experimenting with “safe” carbs and gaining 20 pounds while experiencing crazy cravings for Dove ice cream bars (two boxes at a sitting!), I’ve gone back to low carb and started eating a big protein-filled breakfast for the last 10 days or so. Results: 7 pounds lost, cravings gone.

CT has been great too. No DOMS from lifting, which I attribute to CT. Strength and muscle size increases, which is pretty nice at age 44. Cold adaptation is coming right along too.

@Jim I’ll do that. I like him and I think that he’s got a lot of things right and what he says works for some people. But obviously not for me. His diet may not be optimal, but it’s certainly a lot better than SAD.

I’m with you and have almost adapted myself (Fasted State Training guy 😉 )and can see the gains first hand. I’m also looking at it from biochemistry stand-point and have just a few things to iron out:

1. Glycogen depleted increases gluconeogenesis. As this raises Ammonia production, is this not counter productive ?

2. With threshold and high intensity training (so when Lance is riding at 70-80% VO2max)… I have never seen a single athlete who can keep there RER at 0.7… it always rises. Have you ever seen an athlete that can exercise at high effort while staying in a complete fat oxidative mode ?? I think it can be upregulated, definitely, but if you are an elite endurance athlete, doing sub 2.30hr marathons or riding in the Tour de France, can ATP demands be met via complete beta oxidation ? Even if you haven’t witnessed it, do you think it is theoretically possible ??

@Barry the CT also affect lactic acid production is greatly diminished in CT. So there is clearly a benefit. I am now doing a bio hack on this issue and the new Vasper company uses this as well. I am also now using changes in barometric pressure…….to see its affects.

Hi Dr. Kruse, I got an email that you are going to be on Abel James radio show tomorrow. Do you have notification of your talks/appearances somewhere on your blog? Look forward to hearing you tomorrow. ~Thanks

Natural girl…I tried pregnenalone and progesterone before CT and had major agitation, palpitations and other problems. I believe CT (and paleo) has completely and more naturally increased the hormones I needed to increase…I am so happy not to be trying to figure out the right amounts of pregnenalone, progesterone to use. Hopefully you will have a similar experience.

Dr. Jack, quick question for you. When I CT my toes go numb after I am done (not during) even though I don’t put them in the water. I do put the bottom half of my foot in the water though. I was curious about why it is after that they go numb plus why would a body part not submerged experience this effect. As always, thanks so much!

@Larry its common…..I write about this in my book. It is because our spinothalamic tract covers three dermotomes above and below the decussation of where the pain and temperature fibers cross in the spinal cord. Its normal.

Just did my first labs since last fall, when I eliminated carbs (I was already low carb) and went “great white shark” for the winter.

The results are alarming. I am now severely hypothyroid (high TSH, normal fT4, low fT3), my LDL is through the roof, and my fasting glucose has gone from a healthy level to pre-diabetic. In other words, exactly what the safe starch crowd says will happen.

What can I do? If the answer is CT, well…I have been doing CT religiously for over a month, and my pilot light has yet to turn on. When I get out of the cold tub, I stay cold. If I do it after dinner, I freeze through the night and sleep poorly. Overall, I am cold and miserable — exactly what conventional wisdom would expect from a hypothyroid person who exposes himself to cold and shuns heat!

I want to prove the safe starch crowd and CT naysayers wrong, but so far my n=1 is not encouraging.

@MM one month is not a lot of CT to light your light. TRH will drive it but you can easily get your doc to start you on some bioidentical T3 while you continue to CT. Or you can try PHD way and see how it works……yoru choice. My choice would be to step up CT and try a small dose of T3 and follow your labs closely.

Dr. Kruse I just spent some time reading a ton of paleo people discussing their low carb “flu” symptoms and so many of them seem to sound like low seratonin symptoms. Would tryptophan alleviate this for some and if so how much would you recommend to someone who is low on seratonin? I am paleo, CTing and leptin resetting.

so do compression gear (shirts, ace bandages) make CT more effective. I thought I remembered one of your CT blogs saying to start with them then get rid if them as one adapts. Would you sort that out for me? Thanks for your help!

Dr. Kruse, thank you for taking the time to answer so very many questions. Two issues:
First, do you recommend liver support if people undergo rapid weight loss as you did, to protect against rapid release of stored fat soluble toxins (Glutathione, Silymarin, Taurine, NAC, etc)?
Second, you recommend PPQ, but do you feel that ALCAR, ALA and/or Co-Q10 have benefits or detriments for CT?
Thanks for any insight you can provide!

@MM #82 – I dropped my carbs from 75-80g/day down to 50g/day for the winter and my lab results were similar. Total Cholesterol and LDL way up, TSH and glucose up a bit and A1C result says I’m pre-diabetic.

Hi Dr. Jack, this is my guess as to what Factor X is. It is frequency. Two letters, Hz for hertz. When humans were bombarded with constant cold, Mother Nature increased our cycle frequency so that we could hibernate each night instead of hibernating for eternity because of the neverending cold. So it’s like a fractal: a small cycle within a bigger cycle. Just my guess!

After reading your recent comments on using compression gear, I wore a compression shirt and shorts last night in the shower and it was a great combo because I felt like I got used to the cold water (probably around 50F) quicker but then I definitely got more cherry red afterwards when compared to showers without the gear. I’ll keep it up while I’m adapting, which will take awhile because my CT’ing only involves cold showers and AC in the car (baths are thrown in when possible).

@Dr. Kruse – Good point, I’ll start doing the same. By the way, work is so warm now following my ride in with the windows down and the AC on lol

Two Questions: My hands and feet take a bit to warm up after CT (cold shower/tub, AC in the car) currently. Should I expect this to improve as I adapt and if it gets better, should I take that as a good sign that I’m close to adapted? Would taking Krill Oil to improve my O6-3 ratio help speed this up? Also, once someone is adapted like you are, do you just get in your cold pool and feel fine or does it still take some time to ‘numb up'(3-5 minutes for me)? Thanks!

@Mark I have been doing this so long cold just does not bother me much……..I will say when I suspended CT in Oct1-Jan 8 I craved ice badly…….for a long time. On January 9th 3 PM I really needed it. 120lbs of it.

@Dr. Kruse – I just wanted to add that I think Richard Nikoley hit the nail on the head with his post yesterday when he said that it was something that he couldn’t get away from, despite how tough the first couple of minutes are (referring to the cold water plunges that he used to take PWO at his old gym). So far for me, CT’ing is still a mental battle for the first part (3-5 minutes) but I keep using it because I feel so good afterwards. Example: Last night I was feeling sleepy and had no energy, so I took a 15-minute cold shower with compression gear and then I felt great afterwards. I’d say the lead up to each CT session is similar to what Crossfitter’s go through: get nervous and anxious about the WOD, but then attack it and feel happy when it’s over (I know, I used to be one)

@Mark Richard has been using CT in an infantile forum. I think he really intrigued where I am going…….I also told him Factor X and he is now even more than intrigued. I did not tell all the details…….but he now knows all CT theory is tied to evolution……..and that is what paleo is all about. Its not Jack Kruse’s info……..it is Mother Nature’s. I just picked up the correct rock and am letting sunshine hit upon it for modern humans benefit.

@Stipetic I was probably being too coy (and a bit off, now that I think about it). The epigenetic theory relating to the evolutionary event that your CT is at least partially based upon has been pioneered by a gentleman from the University of Illinois, right? And Factor X is related to the physical–some may say chemical –aftermath of that evolutionary event, no? Sorry for being coy, I’m trying not to give anything away that you probably would not want given away at this time.

@Stipetic No……it is based upon an event than the evolutionary record of species fossils and their development. All known facts in several branches of science outside of biology. It’s got nothing to do with the University of Illinois.

Dr Kruse introduced those of us who have been following his blog to the Leptin Rx and the CT protocol in a controlled step by step manner. He has said that we need to advance slowly and build as we become adapted individually. I am concerned that new readers may not appreciate the power of what we are doing here. Dr. Kruse has said it is “brain surgery without a scalpel”. As we find ourselves enjoying the benefits of adapting to the cold, similar to Wim Hof, it would behoove all of us who would encourage our friends, family and acquaintances to try CT, to be aware of the risks of advancing to quickly. I recently read the joint book by Wim Hof and Justin Rodalis entitled “Becoming the Iceman”. http://becomingtheiceman.com/ I strongly encourage anyone interested in this process to spend a few dollars on this book. Justins part of the story of how he traveled to Poland to spend a week with the “Iceman” Wim Hof and discover how he does the things he does. There is a lot to learn here. Perhaps most importantly in Chapter 47 under Justins method, he describes how he subjected his girlfriend to hypothermia in an attempt to teach her CT. He had shown her he could sit in the iced water for 15 minutes and she was trying it for the first time. She lost her ability to think clearly and make decisions and resisted getting out saying she was warm. Justin writes “It was the scariest moment of both of our lives. I never want anyone to experience what she did. So I implore you to heed caution when attempting any of these exercises, especially with the Full-Body Immersions. Take heed and always keep safety as your main priority.” I urge you all to read the full account of that days CT session in the book. Justin was doing the same procedure we all have been doing.

@Jack – Quick question: How do you know the difference between urticaria and a detox rash? The rash I have is about the level of my navel but more outwards toward the love handle region more on both sides. It itches like crazy and can be warm to the touch. I only seem to have it in this area though. Started off as individual bumps but those grew and sort of merged more. Still individual bumps, but the entire area is red.

@Marijke No, Terry Wahl’s video and Wim Hof’s TED talks motivated me to get this info out to the public. It can help millions of people from their house without any fancy medical treatment. Soon you will all see the results in some video’s I have done on patients using CT pre and post operatively. The results are simply stunning.

@Dr. Kruse – Yeah, I have to keep reminding myself that I’ve only been at this for about a month and I’m not even doing the full protocol. But even still I’m now able to take a cold shower with the temp at the coldest possible, whereas before I had to start out around 75F and gradually get down to only about 60F (and that was only for like a couple of seconds at the end).

And now that I’ve been doing only cold showers for about two weeks, I could definitely see myself missing them if I no longer had access to them. I think when the summer gets in full swing and the water supply heats up, I’ll definitely be filling up the kiddie pool with ice.

Dr Kruse,-From my own experience using the Rx and CT, I haven’t seen any where near the weight loss you describe personally. I’m wondering if I missed something along the way or will you soon be uncovering the step that will allow us to benefit the way you did?

First serious post so first off topic question, were you on a statin when you tore your Knee? I think I found your site while looking for new information on statin side effects. I believe that I have permanent muscle damage. I have been on a low carbish diet since reading The No Grain Diet by Dr Mercola. My biggest aha moment came after reading Ron Rosedale’s leptin paper. His theory of insulin resistance being Mother Natures termination program as acted as a model for me and anyone who will listen. I cannot believe that that has been out there for over 10 years and we still treat T2d with insulin.

Second big aha moment came after reading tg8 and watching the Vasper video.http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=EqQkDmVhml4
I had started reading Dr Sinatra on spacedoc. net but just dismissed it. Are we going There?
I am 56 yo and can not walk around the block without lactic acid buildup. I had noticed that I was too cold to notice when walking the dog in shorts and short sleeves, wind chill 33. The dog gave up before I did.
So what is this about lactic acid triggering HGH release?
Pharmacists whose life was ruined by lipitor
ps hopeful ct will give it back
pss ct has done nothing for my reputation as off the wall crazy

@Greg R 1. No statins ever for me. 2. Rosedale work is great……but I am going different places than him. He got off the train and I am looking to push the science to the end point and I have found a lot more. His Paleo fx talk was all old news. He is not up to speed on Telomere biology at from Dr. Blackburn. He is a smart guy and I think he will get on board soon. He is still looking at Cynthia Kenyon’s old work. 3. CT and compression is off the chain for the hormone response…….that is all I am saying now. I am still pushing the science on myself.

@drjackkruse During Dr. Rosedale’s talk at Paleo f/x everything he mentioned was “I knew this 20 years ago”. I don’t recall him talking about anything since then. I agree with you that he is very smart, my friend had a long talk with him and was blown away. But I think he’s stuck in his current mindset. He’s basically agreeing with much of what you say, but he’s the kind of guy who reads papers and forms opinions, not the kind of guy who does self-experimentation. Once the science is there he’ll come around.

@Jim russell Ron is fabulous for the diabetics of the world…..he is truly way ahead of conventional medicine…….but I am going further but go further back into evolution for the ultimate answer……I think I have found it. People are upset that I am releasing it slowly but the theory is massive and it requires piecemeal digestion……but when I am done the answer is going to be an evolutionary one that few people will be able to argue with. The funny part of all this is that Rosedale has more clinical experience treating T2D than all paleo docs combined and yet there are small minded people who think he is dead wrong………Those people are actually given kudos by some in this community and it is a travesty. I dont agree with Ron on smaller points…….but the man has done some amazing clinical things in his career. He has my respect for that.

Concerning sleep, I’m noticing some nights I sleep phenomenally, while other nights I wake up around 3am. When I wake up then, I’m either wired and ready to go, and it’s difficult to fall asleep again. When my alarm goes off, I’m sometimes very sluggish; other times, not.

Now my question is this: Is this potentially a product of toxin release from fat stores overwhelming my liver on these nights?

Since I sometimes eat my last meal around 2pm, could I be stressing my liver too much to produce ketones for energy throughout the night (I usually fast from 2pm to 545am).

Originally I thought it was b/c I sometimes do jujitsu in the evening, cold shower, then sleep (which was just too much without eating since 2pm). But some nights when I only do a cold tub, I have same middle of the night response.

I’d like to think I’m just going through cycles of toxin release, which disturbs my sleep from time to time, but I want to make sure it’s not an underlying issue or poor eating strategy (BAB in the am; second/last meal about 8 hours later).

@Adam I have had a similar experience. When I do more CT, I tend to sleep very heavy and have trouble getting up when I want to at 4am (usually in bed by 9pm), but here and there I’ll wake up and feel great. It comes and goes. I asked Dr. Kruse about it before and he had a very similar response. I guess it’s just something that you have to go through while you’re adapting and detoxing.

@shinkin13: It took me about 5 weeks to clear, but I started out at low HSCRP (<0.5). My symptoms are gone now. My HSCRP went up to 5.0 during the detox, but I’d bet if I tested, it would be lower since my symptoms have abated.

Dr. Kruse, First off I want to thank you for all the information you are sharing with us – I have personally benefited greatly from following your leptin rx and CT (although am definitely not yet cold adapted). My question is – my hands and/or feet are often still cold, even if I do not personally feel cold (I keep the house between 62-65 degrees during the day). At night I sleep with the window open (35-40 degrees outside right now), but as soon as I fall asleep my hands and feet get very warm. The issue occurs only during the day. Is this a sign that my body is still trying to turn on my “pilot light” and I just need to keep doing CT, or am I missing something here?

‘All right. As long as you behave. Now get up and into the shower. First very hot, then very cold. Like a sauna.’ She waited. ‘Up, ‘ I said. I’m not leaving until that shower is running and steam is pouring out.’

‘I’ll shower. After you leave.’

‘And you’ll run it lukewarm, I know. Get up, get those trousers off, get into that shower. While you’re showering, I’ll fetch your breakfast tray. There is just enough time before they shut down the galley to set up for lunch… so quit wasting time. Please!’

…………….

I did turn it up hot, though it durn near kilt poor old Alex. But I left it hot until the nerve ends seemed cauterized – then suddenly switched it to cold, and screamed.

I let it stay cold until it no longer felt cold, then shut.It off and -dried down, having opened the door to let out the moisture-charged air. I stepped out into the room… and suddenly realized that I felt wonderful. No headache. No feeling that the world is ending at noon. No stomach queasies. Just hunger. Alex, you must never get drunk again… but if you do, you must do exactly what Margrethe tells you to. You’ve got a smart head on her shoulders, boy – appreciate it.

…………….

‘You were right about the sauna-type shower,’ I told her. ‘It was just what the doctor ordered. Or the nurse, I should say.’

‘I know, it’s what my grandmother used to do for my grandfather.’

……………..
Anyway, when I first heard of CT, I had flashback of this book I read before so I took the book out of my book library and scanned the page for this and I was like ah…

Well… it’s almost like CT or whatever… instead of starting with hot shower… Your body temp tends to be above 80° then you step into cold water… but I do find doing what above did… first hot water then turn on cold water and slowly turn down hot water till it send shiver down your spine…. W00T!

Of course I always take cold shower during summer here in Tucson, AZ even if the temp inside my apt is at 70° air chilled

anyway here are some links touting the benefit of cold bath or shower;

Dr Kruse, I have been having cold showers for 8 weeks, a cold bath every week for 4 weeks. Just started having 3 cold baths for 30 minutes for the last two weeks. I am 5′ 9″ and 140lbs. I have been following Art’s NED for 18 months. For the last 8 weeks I have consumed a fish meal for 4 days a week. Also for the last 8 weeks I have eaten breakfast (which I always skipped) , skip lunch have an evening meal then have my scheduled cold bath. I am getting better body definition, but I still suffer from constipation intermittently, and my stool is normally ranked 1, 2 or 3. What can I do to help with this? When I take my body temperature it records at the lower end. I am guessing with all the CT I am doing that is normal?

@Rayblue What I do to solve this is eat 99% pure cacao chocolate because of its Magnesium content. Since I eat it for the resveratrol and Mg content I have no BM issues. I know Robb Wolf like Natural Calm but I like real food better for this, that activates the Ancient Pathway too. I also will sneak some Kimchee into my Kalifornia burger recipe if my stools are too hard to help but that has not been an issue in quite some time.

hi Jack, i accidentally forgot to take a breath when i swam my first length at the pool yesterday. decided i didn’t need to breath more than once a length for the rest of my session. also can comfortably swim butterfly again. that was my first time swimming lengths in 18 months. still only doing weights once a weeks as my only physical training. 6 months ketopaleo + 6 weeks of CT and I am already seeing performance benefits

The traditional Inuit are both cold adapted and live on a ketogenic Paleo diet. Yet they don’t seem to live that long on average. Some on PH and other sites say that the extreme cold conditions (i.e. sleeping on an igloo) are why. So are you saying they would live even SHORTER if they did VLC and lived in a centrally heated house? Or are there other factors (i.e. healthcare) you think that muddle this observation? Or maybe we should have SOME cold adaptation but shouldn’t just live in the Arctic? some sort of middle ground?

@DanielHan I wish Mitch Baird would weigh in here…….he is is an descendant of these people……their experience is documented by their shaman. I spoke to him at Paleo fx and her recount of their history fits perfectly with my theory. Since 1950 they have eaten a western diet…….the best written accounts of their longevity and disease free life was from Albert Schweitzer in the early 20th century. People on PH have no clue what they are talking about. Dan, I am not making the point we should live in the Arctic. I am saying we have two biochemistries. One for warm and one for cold. Cold is the primordial default and we are blinded to it because of the way we evolved. Since we can control our environment, once you cold adapt, what you have been blind to magically appears. And the evidence of that pathway is found in the abilities of certain known things we have observed in our modern world……Sherpa’s, Armstrong, Phelps, NASA astronauts, why organs save best on ices, Wim Hof abilities, and why neurosurgeons can have surgery without pain are but a few……….There are quite a few more……..the fact that this happens needs to be explained because it is not found in any text book of biochemistry written today. The life we are finding at the bottom of polar seas has many forms of life who existence also is not explainable by modern biochemistry. I think i can explain why biology can adapt to it. The reason is Factor X.

@Jack,. So. Here is my shot at factor x thus far….it lies within the following statement :
“One way in which enzymatic catalysis proceeds is by stabilizing the transition state through electrostatics. By lowering the energy of the transition state, it allows a greater population of the starting material to attain the energy needed to overcome the transition energy and proceed to product.”

So i need to connect electrostatics to the reason “why the human brain was naturally selected”

A few other bread crumbs you dropped in the blog that I’m trying to tie in with this …..
Leptin & receptor is an electron counting system,
Omega 3 aids in signaling efficiency,
“nervous systems were adapted to remain insensate to pain”,
3 references to “polar^ (this is a stretch as it may just be reference to cold regions and not electromagnetic polar region),
Vasper uses grounding.

Or maybe Factor X is a Yeti.

PS: i truly hope eNOS trumps SCN… I CT’d tonight, but I am writing this on my phone in bed at 12:45am.

If you recall, during the initial detox phase of CT, my HSCRP went from <0.5 to 5.0. Weight loss slowed than stalled by the 2nd to 3rd week. Could the increased CRP from the detox temporarily slow/stall weight loss? I’m asking because my symptoms have now abated and by week 5 (last week), I lost 2lbs, and this week I dropped 4lbs–so it seems to be accelerating. DHEA must be increasing again b/c my sleep has been off and on–yet the weight is dropping faster again.

Also, on the zeltiq…I noticed that when they do a session, it takes 8 weeks to see the results and for the body to clear all the debris out. Could the inflammatory response from the zeltiq delay the loss be working similar to the detox causing more inflammation temporarily delaying fat loss and apotosis until at least the liver can up regulate toxin clearance?

Thanks a lot.

(P.S. wife has gone gluten free and doing CT too. She likes her cold baths…can’t wait to see if it fixes her bum).

@Beng the results of Zeltiq pattern home based CT to a T. The process is identical the only difference is the time factor. Zeltiq is using metal at a lower temp to get the effect in 6-8 weeks. CT uses the neurologic system to get the effect slowly as time evolves just as mother nature intended it to as the season vary. The more off balance you are from optimal the longer it will take to get there. Any spike in HS CRP slows all weight loss…….but it is a speed bump in this process and it is also why you must sustain through the affect otherwise you lose the benefit. You are a perfect example of this.

I’m intrigued enough to start doing CT. So far I did four sessions using full body immersion in a cold bath.

My question: I had a large rise in blood pressure after the 3rd and 4th sessions and maybe also the first two, I didn’t check. BP went from my normal 130/70 to about 180/90 immediately after session, and persisted until my torso was fully warmed up. About an hour after 4th session, I took a hot shower, and my BP immediately returned to normal. (1) Is this effect expected? (2) Is it safe?

I presume the BP increase was due to increased vascular resistance as my peripheral blood vessels constricted to preserve my core temperature. My core temperature didn’t drop below 98.1 deg. I tend to think it is safe, because I also have a similar rise in BP when doing resistance exercise, and my vascular system is basically healthy. I think it is only long-term high BP that is dangerous.

FYI, the 4 sessions were (1) 30 min at 67 deg, (2) 20 min at 65 deg, (3) 30 min at 60 deg, (4) 40 min at 58 deg. I’m increasing the time and lowering the temperature slowly to be on the safe side. Other than the initial shock of getting into the water, these sessions were not uncomfortable, although I started to shiver 5-10 minutes before ending the last two sessions.

Okay thanks for explaining, makes good sense. I will continue to cold adapt with ice/cold water baths. I didn’t know the Inuit data was from the 20th century. Those people on a western diet (and my ancestors who are Mongolian herders) suffer the most today. It explains why I can be morbidly obese as few asians are.

@Brenda This can be many things, but it can be a sign of something wrong with the conduction system of your heart secondary to higher levels of cytokines. It can also be a sign of visceral fat in the hear that classically shows up more often in those with sleep apnea. I think it would be prudent to check with your cardiologist. It may just be that you have a a poor 06/3 ratio as well.

hi dr.k, is CT good at shredding only subcutaneous fat, or does it shred visceral fat as well? zeltiq is only for subcutaneous fat, i believe.

also, i get nervous seeing a lot of posts here with people having strange reactions to CT. if ct goes mainstream, who will be available to answer all their questions? you would need to develop something like a trouble shooting guide based on labs that either lay people could use, or their doctors. if CT blows up and lots of people start to use it, you will not have time to answer everyones questions when they get a weird, unexpected (to them) reaction fromCT.

@V I have a blog in que about this…..But honestly CT protocol is so simple and so few issues……they are mostly related to toxing detox or doing the protocol wrong. If you stick on protocol you will be fine. CT is best for visceral fat shredding. I have heard that Zeltiq works differently from critics and it makes me laugh. The clinicians who discovered Zeltiq do not even know how it works. They published that too in 2008.

also, as for factor x, i think you mentioned before somewhere a population bottleneck during an ice age that for forced a mammal (mammals?) into the sea in search of food. is that factor x? weren’t whales land-based animals before and then they adapted to live in the ocean?

I have switched from baths and showers to entirely showers. On days where I would soak in 48 deg water for 20 minutes I could never sleep more than 3 or so hours; always in the same pattern: fall asleep after 2 hours for 2 hours then lie awake until 7am and then fall asleep for another hour. Taking 10-15 minutes showers @ 41 degs in the morning, I sleep almost all night albeit with a couple spells of wakefulness.
My tolerance for cold is quite high. I will be outside in t-shirt and shorts while others have winter coats, hats and gloves on.
Testosterone is still low, but I am getting some signs this is improving.
One thing I have noticed is that after a cold bath I am flexible as a yogi. I do not get this increased flexibility after a shower.

I eagerly look forward to each new blog post, and love reading about how others are cold adapting. This is awesome!

@Jack – Quick question: How do you know the difference between urticaria and a detox rash? The rash I have is about the level of my navel but more outwards toward the love handle region more on both sides. It itches like crazy and can be warm to the touch. I only seem to have it in this area though. Started off as individual bumps but those grew and sort of merged more. Still individual bumps, but the entire area is red.

@The Kid The timing is the key……Cold urticaria happens as soon as the ice makes contact with the skin. Its a very quick reaction. The toxin dump occurs as the fat cells are emptied out slowly over time.

@Jack – OK, one more stab at Factor X or at least the concepts surrounding it. On March 10, 2012 Doug McGuff mentioned barometric pressure and related clinical conditions he sees as an ER doc. He mentions hyperventilation, but not in the context of it being Factor X. I would like to submit hyperventilation as Factor X now based on the following (assuming no one has mentioned this already):

There is some very unique physiology that happens related to shallow water blackout. You mention our ancestors having to go to the cold waters to get at a rich Omega 3 source. That means diving. That means the mammalian dive reflex.

I think that you have somehow reaped the benefits of the cascade that leads to Shallow Water Blackout while avoiding the blackout itself. I will bet that you are able to avoid the blackout because certain physiology related to the cold temperatures.

A 2nd grader would know about Factor X because of the so-called “Fainting Game.”

The aforementioned article mentions dramatically reduced heart rate, and adaptations to the spleen, oxygen delivery and blood chemistry related to oxygen utilization, all of which I am assuming you have found lead to sped up epigenetic benefits when coupled with cold.

The article mentions Japanese pearl divers and their “mild hyperventilation.” I would assume the key here is “mild” because too much hyperventilation is obviously dangerous. They purse their lips to ensure that they don’t go too far.

TheKid, I asked earlier if Factor X had anything to do with the cranial nerves and Jack said no. The vagus, which is cranial nerve 10, is partially affected by breathing. So, I doubt it has much to do with breathing. I was initially thinking it had something to do with the valsalva maneuver or something like that but it appears I’m looking at the wrong clues. I thought the evolutionary event was the bottleneck that occured following the Toba catastrophe and the answer could be found somewhere in that mess (I was thinking sulfur/sulfate), but apparently I’m off base there too. Amd don’t get me started with polyvagal theory! Anyway, I’m off to look for some better clues. Cheers.

@Jack – Since starting CT, I have been noticing that at night I heat up, typically an hour or two after dinner. My hands often get warmer and my ears get warm and red. You’ve previously said this is normal. HOWEVER, I have noticed that actually, it is mostly my left ear that gets warm and red. My right ear, not so muc. In fact, not very much. Should I be concerned?

Note: Last year I had an ultrasound on my carotids and they showed some thickening. My CW doctor said it was just aging. Your “Biologic Concrete” blog suggests otherwise. I was worried it is a blood flow problem; and indeed, if I touch both my carotids simultaneously, I think I feel a weaker pulse on the right, the side of the ear that is cooler. Any thoughts?

Jodi, did you get that figure from a national geographic site? It doesn’t look like they are taking about the Sherpas here, but the people of the bigger region. Also, it insinuates violence, oppression and extreme poverty are to blame. I too would like to know more details about the Sherpas lifespans though.

@Jodi, those age estimates also factor high infant mortality and particularly dangerous lifestyles. (If you’ve ever hitch-hiked internationally or taken “public” transport in 3rd World locales, you know what I mean.

I’ve “nearly died” multiple times due to road conditions and bus drivers who routinely use amphetamines to work 36 hours straight.) In my crazy worldwide travels in the rural mountains and jungles of the world, I was shocked by the vigor and mental strength in the elderly. (I’d draw the line at +80 for elder. Anything under that is really “middle aged”.) I rarely saw aging as we see it in the US. This is one of the things that made me question why I felt so healthy every time I left the US.

There IS something happening “here” in Western cultures…but you need to get out of the U.S. and LIVE, WORK, and EMBRACE the local life, lived in foreign lands, as we did decades ago, in order to get a minor glimpse of where we went wrong.

If you subtract alcohol from the equation, many of these cultures would have life expectancies in the +80/yrs. It was shocking for me to see the impact of home-brew in impoverished areas of S. America, Russia, and South East Asia. Women seemed to easily live happily into old age, while many men died in their 50s. (Go to the W.H.O site and look at age expectancy by sex.) What we see in these reports are averages, which honestly tell us nothing.

You have to dig into the details to get to the truth…hence so many are still stuck in S.A.D. I mean, honestly, it makes sense that if you subtract fat, you’d get skinny, right? Oh, how wrong they’ve been!!!!

I made a break through with my CT today!! I was able to do a full submerge in the tub. I of course was a bit extra shiver-y when I got out, but warmed up about 15 mins. I am HOT right now and my face is radiating heat. Haha! I am finally starting to get cold adapted too!! (This is even after noticeable changes too…but like you said, maximum effects are still noticed 24-38 months later: I’m 1.5 months in…:-D

Thanks again Dr. K: Post Leptin Rx (keto seafood) + CT is a MIRACLE! (P.S. I also do Bulletproof coffee too lately (well I use tea for the moment). That is also super great for me.

p.s. I still always sleep in a nice cold room from the window being open and it going a bit below 0 over nights. Just feels SO good and refreshing! My next step for that will be to use a lighter blanket. (I do sleep in shorts and tank).

TheKid said “The aforementioned article mentions dramatically reduced heart rate, and adaptations to the spleen, oxygen delivery and blood chemistry related to oxygen utilization, all of which I am assuming you have found lead to sped up epigenetic benefits when coupled with cold.

The article mentions Japanese pearl divers and their “mild hyperventilation.” I would assume the key here is “mild” because too much hyperventilation is obviously dangerous. They purse their lips to ensure that they don’t go too far.”

I’m not really doing CT beyond finishing a shower with cold water, but i’ve noticed times at night when i seem not to know when to breathe, like my regulation of oxygen is messed up. i never mentioned it because i assumed it was due to perimenopause as some women report feeling like that. maybe it is just perimenopause. i hate that feeling. and i used to get panicky, but now i just wait it out and just don’t worry about breathing when i have this kind of episode. i figure i’ll take a breath when i really need it.

@v interesting you should mention your ‘regulation of oxygen is messed up.’ I’ve been doing the cool shower water dip in the tub with 70 degree water so it’s not quite as stringent as some. I’ve interspersed that with going up to 10,000 feet 2x a week. The barimetric pressure is a lot less on the Mtn. I noticed my breathing was messed up too. If I took a few deep breaths at my level 5200 ft. I would get really dizzy and light headed. If I took some deep breaths up on top i would get really dizzy too. I’m practicing singing and it’s hard to know how much of a breath to take so I don’t feel like I’m going to pass out. I went up last on 4-1, and will go up again tomorrow 4-7. Then they are closed for maintenance for the next 2 weeks and I have about 5 weeks of traveling some of which will be in mountainous regions though. I guess you are saying to relax with the breath taking part. I’ve had to cut down on some of this because of the temporary work load. Maybe some magic will happen in the cardiovascular system as it catches up with what I’ve been doing. Thanks to you and ‘TheKid’ for keeping going.

I live in Denver at 5280 feet. If I wanted to add high altitude to the equation how far up should I go, for how long, and for how often? It takes 20 minutes to get into the mountains from Denver. At 14000 feet I get head and neck aches and a bit of the altitude sickness, air hunger, and am exhausted at the end of the day. I can get up to 10580 feet which is the trailhead for Mt Evans(14K+ feet). Colorado has many 14teeners but Mt Evans is the only one that I know of that one can drive to the top. Can’t get to the top of Mt. Evans till after Memorial Day when the snow is finally gone.

I figured you were doing something with altitude. Having used a altitude tent for athletic training on and off since the mid-90s I can tell it you it does improve performance. For much of that of time I lived at sea Level, but with the tent I could sleep at 8-15,000ft. It allowed me to race effectively at altitude. I’m combining the tent now with CT and my own Vasper type setup and looking forward to the results.

@Susan and Rick. glad to know there are others interested in altitude. I’ve discovered that some doing training use the machines for 60 to 90 minutes at a time. So I travel from 5200 feet to 10,000 feet and stay there for that amount of time. Dr K said to eat protein and fat before going up and of course to drink water. That has helped a lot.

Sorry I’m off topic but I wondered if your wife uses ice (on back)or cold hydrotherapy(on legs)for her horse’s back injury. I have a horse with possible spine fracture and can find very little relevant science on cold therapy or feed in relation to bone repair for animals.

@Jack – I am doing a biohack of sorts myself. I mentioned before that animals don’t “work out,” yet they perform just fine. And you point to polar bears being physically capable post-hibernation (by the way, I think I read that only females hibernate. What about the males?)

Because I was so overtrained, I stopped exercise altogether and continued with the Leptin Rx and started CT as well.

Do you consider exercise necessary for optimal health or should diet and CT pretty much take care of that? I know that you suggest specific exercise a la Mark Sission once signs of LS are there. But what if I don’t exercise? Would that be a problem? Or should I start lifting some heavy things?

@The Kid Let me be directionally accurate here……..all polar bears have to get fat in the spring and summer on foods mother nature provides to it and begin to to get IR then they den. If they do not get fat they wont survive the brutal polar winters. Under ground they spend 4 months in the freezing cold without a lot of food, water, or potty time. They emerge in the spring shredded of fat and have the largest muscle mass they have all year. (Yes, I checked this with the polar bear biologist in Alaska last year) Most modern humans believe that to shred fat and get big muscles they need exercise. The polar bear is a living example that we do not. There are many examples of this in wild animals as well besides the polar bears. That means that this biochemistry exists. But you wont find mention of it in a modern human biochemistry book. So you need to ask WHY?

What do humans and polar bears have in common? They are eutherian mammals. What do they not have in common? One lives by the rules of Mother Nature in fall and winter and the other one creates a constant summer in its house. Mother Nature makes the “smarter” of the two pay a toll for ignoring her.

Old age, to the unlearned, is winter; to the learned, it’s harvest time. -Yiddish proverb most modern hominids forgot.

@TheKid thanks, I googled polar bears. This seems to be the consensus:http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/polar-bears/faq#q15
Do polar bears hibernate?
Not in the strict sense of the word. True hibernators experience a marked drop in heart rate and body temperature and generally stay for a long period in a den. Polar bears instead enter a state of walking hibernation where their metabolism slows. Only pregnant polar bears enter a den, give birth, and emerge three months later.

It has even been shown in primates. But it appears some of the “smart critics” out there did not know it either.

I used polar bears as an example in the podcast because they are eutherian mammals and they live in the cold. The same could be said for a mountain lion in yellowstone who does not den (used this in the Paleo Summit example with Sean Croxton)……..he is leanest in the winter due to lack of food and to the cold. Humans are fattest int he winter because this is when corporations try to sell us exercise equipment for January 1st resolutions that we lose willpower to execute on by January 15th. The point is made to be directionally accurate and not 100% infalliable. Once you realize how most eutherian mammals deal with cold and look at us there is a drasitic difference. That is the ultimate point many choose to gloss over. That keeps it in our blind spot.

Terry F said: ” I noticed my breathing was messed up too. If I took a few deep breaths at my level 5200 ft. I would get really dizzy and light headed. If I took some deep breaths up on top i would get really dizzy too. I’m practicing singing and it’s hard to know how much of a breath to take so I don’t feel like I’m going to pass out. I went up last on 4-1, and will go up again tomorrow 4-7. Then they are closed for maintenance for the next 2 weeks and I have about 5 weeks of traveling some of which will be in mountainous regions though. I guess you are saying to relax with the breath taking part. I’ve had to cut down on some of this because of the temporary work load. Maybe some magic will happen in the cardiovascular system as it catches up with what I’ve been doing. Thanks to you and ‘TheKid’ for keeping going.”

Terry, my discomfort with breathing came in the middle of the night and had nothing to do with altitude. i didn’t feel dizzy either. it will be interesting to see if dr. k has anything to add. this is all a big experiment, so a lot of these reactions probably haven’t been seen before. like dr. k said in a previous post, there is not a lot of data on this.

@Dr K thanks for your quick reply..whenever a patient presents with anxiety/panic, as a neurosurgeon I hope you agree that there is a specific neural malfunctioning happening..not an “emotional” cause..I hope ct helps me to heal my brain

@Vince neurosurgeons always think neural wiring……the shrinks and psychologist are the professionals who default to emotions. For us emotions are the last choice when we really do not know and do not want to tell we do not know. Most docs use the genetic explanation as their get of jail free card too for many modern diseases instead of just saying they do not know.

@Jack – Polar bears are very interesting. I read elsewhere that they are the only bears that have the ability to downregulate their metabolisms AT ANY TIME OF YEAR in the absence of a food source. Apparently other bears, when deprived of food, just starve.

Additionally, I read, I think at Polar Bears Interntaional, that polar bears show much greater resistence to sickness, although some do tend to carry trichinosis. So I am assuming they have upregulated immune systems.

@The Kid the issue with polar bears is that they consume far fewer calories in the cold then at any other time in year. CT -4 shows that in all mammals cold selects for calorie restriction naturally as Mother Nature intended. Humans break this rule routinely. This is why ad companies make tons of money off january first exercise ads. This also fits the Ancient Pathway and is another example of how humans differ because of their choices. The “soul of biology” knows how to heal itself, the main challenge to success is to learn to silence the mind simultaneously. When I was researching polar animals I was fortunate to know a marine biologist up in Alaska who works for the US government. He says polar animals in the wild are the most hearty animals he has ever seen and rarely get ill unless man affects their habitats.

@Jack – The reason I asked about exercise, is because I remember stumbling upon our favorite Bulletproof Exec, Dave Asprey, several months ago. He had a pick of him looking quite fit, along with the claim that he did not exercise. That piqued my interest and your protocols seems to explain how that is possible.

Have you talked with Dave about his body composition and training, or rather, lack thereof?

@The Kid Dave and I are now going to do some things together. We had a long talk over at Paleo fx and his ideas and mine fit nicely. He was real intrigued by some of what I am doing and I love his hacks on the brain. My hacks are a bit extreme but I am trying to help people who are quite sick and ill while Dave is pushing human performance. I am hoping Dave, myself, Ray Cronise and Wim Hof can form a company soon to show the world just what is possible with CT. That is my vision.

Are you aware of chronic virus infections presenting adversely when doing CT? Two times now, months apart, I have gotten very sick with swollen tonsils (very large, red, no puss) almost within 4 hours of doing moderate CT, just cold shower for around 10 minutes with sore joints the next day. I stopped after only one attempt in each case and do not know what will happen if I push on.

I have always suspected I harbor chronic virus of some type because I can get a cold in the middle of summer just by sleeping under an open winter or by going outside for a short time in the winter without any coat.

I have been Rob Wolf paleo for two years now, very lean, etc but what is the possibility I cannot CT because of chronic infections?

Incidentally, the night of the 2nd CT session, after having developed severely enlarged tonsil afterwards, I had heavy night sweats and felt better in the morning except for very bad joint pain.

Does CT give chronic virus or bacterial infections (some people are chronic strep carriers for instance) a leg up to proliferate? Jack, thanks for you help.

@Jerry if the pathogen is buried with fatty tissue I think it can become active once the fat cells are emptied. But that also means that for some reason your immune system is not idea either. I think you should look into testing yourself. Dr. Shoemaker’s work on Lyme might stimulate some of your own detective work here. To me clearing it from your fat cells make sense as long as you have a plan to get it from your body. Maybe when you toxin dump you can run some serum tests to see what you really have. An ID doctor might be very helpful if you do this on yourself.

It seems the medical establishment today views the human body as an island, and that it is their role as physicians to provide us humans with the means to protect us from “potential harmful outside forces”ie: pathogens, fat consumption etc. Thus what happens is the prescription of antibiotics, statins etc. to protect us. But never is their an interest in building our bodies own ability to handle whatever is thrown at it. That is why you are so different than all the other MD’s.

Pathogens are everywhere we live. I would guess many humans are colonized with harmful pathogens, but just not activated. It is when they become immunity suppressed that they are activated.

@Conan Modern medicine has forgotten when we protect the terrain first and foremost with a good defense using a proper diet we might not need the things modern man thinks to defend ourselves. MRSA is a man made bacteria……and It appears that cold is a worthy adversary for it. This is helpful information for me as a surgeon.

Yep. Conventional medical treatment has gotten me where I am today along with 50 some years of the SAD diet. With my RA I was on many of the trials for the new drugs like Enbrel, the TNF inhibitors and continued them after they were approved drugs which eventually trashed my immune system. Throughout the trials my doc kept feeding me antibiotics & antifungals which in hindsight meant the trial stats looked better than they should because the antibiotics kept the infection rates down. After drugs approved no more antibiotics & antifungals and voila, systemic fungal infection to the point of near death. Then on to a better trial for a drug being tested for RA, one recently approved and again, plied with antibiotics and antifungals during trial phase and after approval not so much but still I became “colonized” with pseudomonis ariginosa graham negative bacteria which damaged my lungs to the point CT scans show severe lung damage normally found in poor 3rd world situations without proper nutrition, etc. So that my oxygen levels when walking or upon exertion drop at time to such low levels that I require oxygen. Resting rate averages 94-95, bad day walking around dropping to 84 worst case. So yes, when doing stuff, need oxygen stuck up my nose on bad days, Sitting around, nope. Kinda sucks.

Dr. Kruse,
You are right about the doctors and the get out of jail free card. I hate it when people won’t say they don’t know. The smartest people I’ve ever met say they don’t know things all the time. Trying figure out the questions to ask makes you smart (IMO). You could still be wrong, but if you are trying to find the answer, you can’t ask for more.

Quickly, last lung scan showed many nodules and last sputum tests showed aspergillis, itraconazole is a nasty, nasty drug and I am so tired of taking drugs! Since going strict completely in January I am not on ANY for my RA and am not too keen on doing any. But should I take the antifungals one last time? I do feel much better than I have for years and years

How can I step up my CT since I cannot get in and out of the bath without assistance due to multiple joint replacements? My best CT time has been early dawn Am when temps are down in tahe 50s but it is now reaching 60 –and summer is upon us here 90 degrees today …. Cost too much to run ac. Can we purchase cold compression suits anywhere too?

@Cecile That fungus is a nasty one. But the status of your immune system maybe more important. Do you have a recent HS CRP or Vit D level form your doc? CT will help……but if your immunocompromised ( I am assuming you are by the history you gave) I think you need to be careful not using the antifungals. If your feeling well and the D levels are high and HS CRP low you might be able to avoid them. What has your ID doc said?

A friend of ours has RA for ten years in her hands. She is an avid canvas painter…but recently she could no longer even hold a paintbrush. She became very depressed. She is 80 years old. The medical community had given up on her completely. I started her on a ketogenic diet and have had her dipping only her hands in ice water for a month. She is now back to painting 5 hours a day without pain.

There is hope for you, Cecile

I am convinced that the cold will heal most ills. Do as much as you can of CT for as long as you can.

Once you drive those fungi and toxins out of your fat cells you will be a new woman.

Vit D level was 34 last October. Have stepped up to 3000 per day and hoping to have them optimal next testing. My ID doc was not ecstatic about my not choosing to continue (took it for 5 days) the itraconazole due to bad side effects but went along. Am to get back ASAP if my sputum production gets worse. Have a dx for many, many blood tests that you have suggested and will go next week. The one that my primary didn’t put down was for the rT3 when I specifically asked for it. She checked: comprehensive metabolic, added homocysteine, checked lipid panel 80061, folic acid, CRP HS, estrogen, estrodial, CBC 85025, Glycohemoglobin 83036, progesterone, DHEA, TSH 84443, free T4, Vit B 12, Vit D 25, urines UA reflex to C&S, Microalbumin, then microbiology: prolactin, FSH, LHASA.

Should I just check the Total t3 84480 box myself before going into the lab? Will those just about cover all we need to know? Many, many, thanks, I bow low.

@v, yes, I was just referring to the ‘messed up breathing’ part from what ever source. where ever it comes from I thought your idea to relax and not panic about it and let your body take it’s own breath whether it’s altitude or middle of the night sea level. thanks

Dr K saw your reply at 204. I don’t want to wait until 2014 when the mtn is right outside my door today! I bought a pulse oximeter to find out what is going on. I have a BG meter too. However, since I’ve been eating properly I may not need it. I’m doing some of my breath exercises and plan on experimenting with the different types. Things are moving along. Seems you are in your planning stages on this so I will keep on keeping on. I think I will have to find a retired Sherpa to give me some advice in the meantime. LOL. Thanks for giving me this idea having a great time.

@ Dexter thank you for the encouragement. My RA has affected every joint in my body and when I started CT in earnest it was hard to sit outside in 45 – 55 degrees in my undies for hours but now I can’t wait to get outside, problem is it is warming up and I will have to get more inventive like most everyone here. The CT immediately shuts down any joint pain and it has been been such a relief since I have always refused to take pain meds stronger than aspirin or Tylenol.

Dr. Kruse I will up my D to 5000 daily and 2 weeks ago I started myself on K2 5mg day. I have been struggling trying to eat the 9 cups of greenery per Terry Wahls in fact 9 cups is pretty impossible if I am to get in my BAB. I have read everything on your site and many posts more than once since there is so much to ingest and learn from all of them I am certain I will read them over until I understand fully.

I’m thinking I should just check the total t3 box off On the lab sheet myself . What is the box for the omega 6/3 ratio since I forgot to ask for that’s one?

@Cecile 5000 IU for you is not going to cut it. As for the greens…….put them in a vitamin and make sauces of them to decrease the amount and increase the surface area for you to absorb them……this is what I tell all my neurodegenerative patients to do.

Terry F, I wonder why dr. k didn’t comment about the breathing and oxygen dysregulation? maybe because it is not in his experience. if i had problems with breathing a lot instead of once in a blue moon like i do now, i would keep researching it and try to find the answer. professor de vany has a supplement out which i haven’t tried, but anyway, he made the comment that it contained a lot of vitamin c cuz it is needed for hormonal signalling. maybe with keto paleo you are not getting enough vita c. just talking as a layman who is not 40 % seafood paleo and just doing cold rinses after showers.

@Cecile, With you at 34 ng/ml Vit D3 being woefully inadequate, you need to be taking at least 25000IU/day for a month to boost your immune system quickly along with the CT. Then back down to 10000 a day for another month then test the D3 level. Dr K wants his patients to be 70 to 100ng/ml.

Regarding Reverse T3 and T3…get them both taken and read http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com about what the optimal T3/RT3 ratio is. Should be around 20. The units need to be the same to divide T3 by RT3.

@v thanks for the Vit C info. I had run out of it and a few days ago I got a new supply. Today I went up the mtn and did not have the dizziness problem either up or down Interesting, hormone signaling eh? Also see my comment at 236. Many thanks for your info.

@Jack – Help me understand something better. Your approaches leverage neuroplasticity. We can switch from our current neuroendocrine responses to the proper neuroendocrine responses that will place our bodies back into the homeostatic balance nature intended.

My concern is “neuroendocrine memory.” Once we reset our Leptin and successfully cold adapt, have we actually reset the balance of the two neuroendrine pathways we’re dealing with here (insulin resistance vs. fat burning)? Or will the years of non-optimal living always make the insulin resistance pathway “hyper-sensitive?” And amongst the formerly metabolically broken, will that mean it will be necessary to constantly reassert the optimal path through diet and cold for fear of recidivism? And could this be the reason so many people fall back into weight gain and health problems after losing large amounts of weight? Or do your protocols actually fully reset the sensitivities of the pathways and allow for fully normal responses to dietary triggers such as increased amounts of carbohydrate?

I am wondering also whether you personally, after a summer of carbing at a higher level, have difficulty returning to the fat burning pathway? Is it a struggle for you?

And more importantly, is it a struggle in nature for animals that experience winter? I mean, does a bear or squirrel, all nice and fat and ready for winter, “feel” carb carvings once their carb sources are gone? This brings me back to an earlier question about bears whose habitats overlap with human development, thus making them garbage dump foragers. Do such bears continue to be driven to carb up in winter because of the often readily available carbs found in human garbage?

@The Kid listen to my recent podcast with the fatburningman.com I say in this podcast that when we confuse the brain it defaults to trying to figure out what in the world is going on by rewiring. So no matter what your neural memory is it can be altered. We learned this biologic fact in the cochlea implant trials. Go listen to the podcast and reflect on what I said there and here and then think about what you asked me.

thekid said: “And amongst the formerly metabolically broken, will that mean it will be necessary to constantly reassert the optimal path through diet and cold for fear of recidivism?”

i think dr. k said if you are not trying to repair a neolithic disease and your telomeres are in good shape, you still have to do CT in fall and winter. so yes, we do have to “constantly reassert the optimal path through diet and cold for fear of recidivism”.

The kids and hubby went to the lake yesterday and the ice was off so they all jumped in after the work was done. 10 year old also took a cold shower as there was no hot water yet. She said wasn’t bad after she got numb. They would not have done this if they hadn’t seen me and hubby do CT and talk about it. 15 year old did CT 2 x last week before track practice. They are listening.

@Susan if you liked that just wait til you hear my opening speech at Paleo fx………this podcast was just an appetizer for that speech. Abel is a great interviewer……I just did not know we were on the record so early……i dropped too many expletives for my liking.

ok, you mentioned that whales are our “deep” ancestors. freetheanimal man mentioned that fans of “deep evolution” would be interested in the X factor. and i have heard professor de vany speak often of deep evolution. so a little later on today i am going to google around for books of deep evolution and also look at your facebook page.

ps it’s funny how people look at you and have a mirror onto themselves. i believe that is called ‘projection’. i look at your talk at TED and see someone who just wants to help people. that is what i laser in on. freetheanimal man looks at you and sees someone like himself- not afraid to anger people, self-confident, wanting a reaction. this leads me to the conclusion that we don’t know anything. the bottom line is what you said at devany’s site. what people really care about is results.

@V it is……and I get them. The problem is people dont like how I do it. The people your getting ready to see in the next few blog posts however feel a lot differently about my methods. When you see how I parleyed my bio hack into results……well I’ll let you decide who is nuts or not.

@Dr. Kruse.. This isn’t related to Ct, but I was wondering if you could still help me with this question.

I have Keratosis Pilaris and am trying to find a nutritional connection, but am having a hard time as I don’t have a science background at all. I know you have said that you have not seen this in your patients before. Though I wonder if maybe you just haven’t noticed as it is a skin condition that is merely cosmetic. Seems that about 40% of adults have it which is quite a bit.

Anyways here is how it happens for reference from wikipedia:

“Keratosis pilaris occurs when the human body produces excess keratin, a natural protein in the skin. The excess keratin, which is cream colored, surrounds and entraps the hair follicles in the pore. This causes the formation of hard plugs (process known as hyperkeratinization). Bearing only cosmetic consequence, the condition most often appears as a proliferation of tiny hard bumps that are seldom sore or itchy. Though people with keratosis pilaris experience this condition year-round, it is during the colder months, when moisture levels in the air are lower, that the problem can become exacerbated and the goose bumps are apt to look and feel more pronounced in color and texture.
Many KP bumps contain an ingrown hair that has coiled. This is a result of the keratinized skin’s “capping off” the hair follicle, preventing the hair from exiting. The hair grows encapsulated inside the follicle.”

I’ve been on your protocol for 10 wks and been doing CT for about 4-5 wks now. I haven’t seen any difference so far. Online there are many guesses at causes, but no real answers yet. I feel that it must be related in some way to nutrition, but I don’t know what vitamins/minerals or maybe O6/O3 ratio that affects proteins in the skin and might cause hyperkeritinization. I was thinking VitA seemed the best place to start and have been eating 1 lb of liver for the past few months, but doesn’t seem to change anything yet.

Anyways, I figure there are connections that I can’t seem to see/make because I don’t have the scientific knowledge to start with. I was hoping maybe you could hazard some guesses of where or what I should start looking at to try to figure it out. Thank you for any suggestions you can give.

“It lives entirely in fertile Arctic and sub-Arctic waters, unlike other whales that migrate to feed or reproduce to low latitude waters.”
It outlives the larger Bluewhale which migrates to warm areas each year.

Jeffery Bada found that most of the adult whales were between 20 and 60 years old when they died(caught by Eskimo hunters), but five males were much older. One was 91, one was 135, one 159, one 172, and the oldest whale was 211 years old at the time of its death. That whale, alive during the term of President Clinton, was also gliding slowly and gracefully through the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas when Thomas Jefferson was president.

Bada explained that the method of measuring changes in aspartic acid to determine age has an accuracy range of about 16 percent, which means the 211 year-old bowhead could have been from 177 to 245 years old.

@TruthHunter…….you should see the latest data on great White sharks……even more impressive. They are not mammals but they evolved 420 million years ago and they live predominantly in cold water, feed in mostly cold water and rarely in tropical waters and they swim unreal distances……we know this today from GPS data. They feed in freezing cold and they live very very long lives.

1. My Raynaud’s seems to be getting worse with continued CT. I wear gloves and socks and keep my hands/feet out of the water yet the numbness is becoming more frequent. Any thoughts on why this is happening?

2. Do you believe that CT + keto diet alone can repair hormonal deficiencies or is it necessary to combine with BHRT?

There is a lot of talk here about polar bears loosing a lot of fat after hibernation. I might be missing something here but polar bears have a ton of blubber to deal with frigid temperatures and hibernation. Why would we as humans want to trigger hibernation states? Hibernation also means fat gain. You seem to totally avoid that aspect of hibernation and only talk about weight loss after long cold exposures and a ketogenic diet in winter.

CT is interesting. I have experienced an energy surge after cold exposure. It makes sense that it would affect metabolism since the body needs to work hard to try to maintain a warmer temperature. Wouldn’t the body adapting to cold simulate a state of exercise along with the benefits which would also encourage better sleep and enhanced immunity? Referencing an organ placed on ice to preserve it is a silly argument for CT since that is nothing more than what is going on in our refrigerators.

Can’t help feel that although some interesting ideas, you may be defying evolution rather than help it along. Hibernation in a modern world just doesn’t make sense. CT may just be a means to counteract all the fat gain a hibernation state may bestow upon us.

The human body is wonerfully adaptive. A sherpa’s body learns and evolves to adapt to what is demanded of it. A couch potato’s body fed crap atrophies and diseases. That’s the simple part.

@K I think people are missing the polar bear analogy. It matters little that bears are not true hiberantors but neither are we or our immediate ancestors. It appears however we have the hardwiring in our brains however to still do it. The reason……is what I am getting too……bears are mammals and so are we. And that fact can not be argued. Moreover this entire observation I have made can be explained by epigenetics of mammals. And that is where I am heading. Everyone thinks they know where I am going but they really do not. For now I’ll let them speculate but I think when I show you how some observations lead to some reasoning……and to some experimentation…….and then to some validation of the biologic plausibility……..we’ll see what you all think then.

I’ve been CTing for almost 6 weeks now and am currently doing 20-30 min baths 5-6 times a week in 53 degree water. I’ve also been on the leptin rx for 10 weeks.

In the last few years I’ve noticed my tolerance for heat declining, but it seems to be getting much, much worse lately. Any correlation to the CT or leptin rx?

I find after some meals my face gets cherry red, super flushed and extremely hot to the touch. What’s particularly strange is that sometimes the rest of my body can actually be cold and even have chills, but other times my entire body is heated up.

Have you seen this? Any thoughts on what’s going on? Should I take this as good or bad?? Thanks!

Thanks Doc. Any ideas on what could be causing it then? I know my hormones are low across the board and I’m working on increasing them with CT and your prescribed diet. My hsCRP is low, vit D is good, cholesterol is good. I do have functional hypothyroidism. Anything else you’d target to try to find the root cause of this?

See, K, when Dr. K talks about ‘hibernation’ he doesn’t mean for us to some how go in a cave for Winter and Spring, he’s talking about our condensed ‘hibernation’ called sleep at night. It’s using what modern evolutions our species has done and how to tweak it based on old pathways we have from mammalian time.

I suppose the question I have is regarding more carbs in summer and Fall, in a reset state, to determine what is an appropriate fat gain to prep for the winter? Hopefully it’s nothing too wild of a gain and only minimal (if at all?). (Because maybe you can start to reach IR, but before any major fat %, then the keto diet starts again since it’s already into winter by that time).

Thanks Dr. K! Again, I always say thank you because this experience is such a good thing. Also in relation to how people won’t try your protocols just because they don’t know the direction you take is a bit silly. It’s important to try the experiments on ourselves…we see/experience results for OURSELVES, then we get the cool “Well here is the rest of how it works and here’s my examples”. COOL!

Dr. K, I’m curious about your family member as a navy seal that you mentioned in an underground wellness interview. Did his diet practices and cold adaptation result in better performance (i.e. recovery time, stamina, mental toughness) at BUDs?

I’m an aspiring Spec War guy, is there any advice you have for me relating to my pre BUDs training and BUDs itself?

@josh most people drop out of the Seal training because they cant handle the extreme cold adaptation they do…….but if you train correctly before you get there guess what……it is a breeze. He has had no issues so far that I know of.

Factor X. My thoughts are that it has to do with sleep. Deep levels of sleep and a sort of hibernation. After reset and CT this seems where we make our gains and improvements.
If CT is slowing things down deep sleep compensates by speeding up improvements. The deeper and longer or frequency of this hibernation the better self we become.
Am I on the right track? The link that ties the other stuff together.

Starting to do the CT reset these last few days. I have already been lean, 5-6% BF and pretty strong. I do mostly Paleo and have included IF to my daily or weekly eating style. I have usually skipped breakfast put will start including it ( at times I have been having sleep issues). I have been active most of my life. I love being healthy and working out.
Been battling some small injuries and a bad back and hip muscles that spasm.
Well a few things I have noticed so far. My skin around my muscles have in a way shrink wrapped and I appear more chiseled. The cold hurts I’m not going to lie but afterwords I feel energized. My small aches and injuries have substituted and my back feels like it is finally getting releif. I feel less inflamed. Sleep isn’t coming back yet but I have only been doing it now for 3 days. Building up with cold showers, outside hose downs and ice backs. Been putting ice packs on my back as well.
So far I am loving it… We will see where this will go. I am 48 this month. I’ve always felt younger than that but hey with this I may be back to my twentys and doing back flips again.

Wow…. I just finished an hour long ice bath. It was cold and at the end I was shivering like crazy. My body temperature dropped to around 93 degrees. Is that OK? I notice after doing CT during the day it will get under 95 degrees. Anyway afterwards it took me over an hour to feel comfortably warm again, around 96.5 degrees. I then feel asleep for an hour of the best sleep I have had in a long time. Woke up feeling refreshed. Is this how it works until I get adjusted?

Based on your recommendations for cold therapy, I have been doing some spring swimming in the icy waters of Maine. Water temps are in the low 40’s. I was just interviewed by a New England news station as I came out of the water. Apparently a kayaker died in the water the night before so they were looking for some perspective on how cold the water was. They asked me why I was doing this and I mentioned the benefits of CT and referenced you. That part did not make it into the brief interview though. Thanks for your help! Here is the link: http://www.necn.com/04/16/12/Death-of-kayaker-drawing-concerns-about-/landing_newengland.html?blockID=690688&feedID=10150

This is Mandy from your melasma blog. I am fit and of healthy weight. I don’t want to lose weight in any parts of my body but want to do CT to reduce inflammation in my body and see if it benefits melasma reversal in the long run.

I have been dunking my face in iced water past 1 week. I want to jump straight into cold water tub after another week. Since my purpose is not to lose weight, is it okay for me to just sit in cold water while maintaining skin temperature to 50-55? Clearly, blood won’t flow from the site of high temp to low as entire body will be at the same temperature. But I don’t want to lose any weight with CT.

I also want to skip compression shirt based CT as I find that very cumbersome.

Cold Thermogenesis 8

Readers Summary

Can we funnel the CT series into 15 concepts?

What is the main problem modern humans face?

What is the evolutionary bottleneck that drives this process?

Radical Theory #1: If our brains can rewire, then Einstein’s theories predict our biochemistry should be able to as well. My Leptin Rx and the modern cochlea implant definitively prove this in modern humans.

Radical Theory #2: Considering that 90{a7b724a0454d92c70890dedf5ec22a026af4df067c7b55aa6009b4d34d5da3c6} of the earth’s current biome lives in extreme conditions on our own planet today still, we might need to consider that what we think is “our normal environment” is not so normal for most of life on our planet or our evolutionary history. Life on Earth evolved in an environment much like we see on Titan today; in a deep ocean frozen solid at its surface with the capability of life buried deep with in it. The only escape was due to ejectants of water vapor from super heated water from underwater volcanoes. All these things are present today on Earth’s crust too. There is one major difference now between the two. We are a lot warmer today than when life began. There are others, but when one looks at Titan we see a frozen giant moon with a monstrous ocean beneath it.

All life on our planet came from the oceans first. We know this to be true as well. And because of this, studying extremophile forms of life here on earth today might explain the complexities of how biochemistry allows for life to exist at all in a thermoplastic environment.

What the bio-astrophysics found on Titan with the Cassini Solstice mission, may be a huge clue that life first adapted to extreme environments and then was naturally selected and adapted to a cyclic warming trend on our planet’s crust over time.

Our hominid species may have adapted during this warming trend, but the DNA we inherited came from animals that were cold adapted. Evolution uses epigenetics to determine adaptation to environments. We have discarded the strict definition of genetic determinism in the last ten years. We know today that the power of epigenetics dictates a lot more about newer generations adaptations than we even knew since the 1950s. The implications of this information now has to make us look at some of our own long standing assumptions about how living cells work in cold and warm environments to see how our cells react to a thermoplastic environment.

They may not have even made a big impact when hominids evolved 2.5 million years ago because by all geologic accounts it was still warm. But it remains possible that the impact could be a lot larger than we expect as well. We may not fathom this possibility but it is clearly in the realm of possibility.

The modern science of epigenetics shows that who we came from and what they faced has a direct biologic effect upon subsequent generations DNA and phenotypes. It is crystal clear today, but the biologic implications remain unexplored in all modern day literature. What is happening on Titan today may be like opening up a black hole back to a reality that used to be our own. The ability to see Earth at life’s evolutionary beginning is now a possibility.

Radical Theory #3: One of my readers pointed out recently he was confused by Dr. Gamble’s CT-2 video (below), when she said the normal pattern of sleep in a natural environment had two cycles. He wanted to know why her version and my version for sleep as written in my post Rx for the Leptin Rx were not congruent. It was a great question that really opens the discussion to the idea of evolutionary mismatches. These mismatches occur in many modern systems of biology and they are actually increasing in frequency and severity as time elapses. The reason is quite simple. Evolution is constantly getting faster as time goes on relative to the current state of our genome. Human creativity also constantly generates them with its new “modern technological advances” Consider Google glass as the next catastrophe we will face.

Why is this happening? Factor X is the evolutionary reason and Factor X was an evolutionary bottleneck that resulted in the natural selection of the Ancient Pathway (leptin-melanocortin system) of the mammalian brain. I think most humans are not really ambiently aware of how how basic circadian mismatches destroy our biology slowly via the “slow erosion of metabolic function.” This factor is the source of most of our neolithic diseases modern hominids face today. We can now measure these mismatches with simple blood tests. I laid this out in the Paleo Summit talk with Sean Croxton and in my many panel discussions at Paleo fx 2011. I strongly suggest you review them when they become available.

Radical Theory #4: Sleep and cold the environment, were our ancestors primordial condition and as such, this was evolutions starting point for life on our planet. This is why even today 90{a7b724a0454d92c70890dedf5ec22a026af4df067c7b55aa6009b4d34d5da3c6} of the living biome on Earth remains in a freezing cold environment. Humans believe because they are the penultimate species of evolution there current environment is a more important factor than it really is.

That is a very faulty assumption. Life on this planet evolved from the deep oceans to land. Therefore the biochemistry that dictate’s modern energy generation can not be generalized to all life forms on this planet. It can be studied on those mammals, animals, and bacteria that have undergone natural selection to a warmer climate and have assumed a warm adapted diet. Just because we use and live this way, has no bearing on what we evolved from, or if energy generation is somehow more efficient or less efficient in a different thermoplastic environment. Sleep is the most important part of our biology for Optimal living in my opinion. I begin every hack I do in the clinic using sleep as the basis.

Radical Theory #5: Evolution speeds up as time progresses on. This is a known biologic fact. The faster this epigenetic evolution occurs the greater risks we face at the hand of mismatches. We may then begin to see the real causes of why diabetes might occur.

Radical Theory #6: Modern epidemics are not caused by genetics, but by epigenetics! This is also a medical clinical fact that gets lost in the modern scientific literature but you would never get that from reading the literature on diabetes. In fact, the totality of the diabetes literature would have you believe the exact opposite. This is a neolithic thought that has hurt all modern diabetics and is at the seat of why modern medicine has failed to find a cure.

Mother Nature has a cure for insulin resistance in all eutherian mammals. That is cold exposure of there peripheral nervous systems. The stimulus to this pathway begins when the mammal is exposed to a high dietary carbohydrate diet that is found in long light cycles on this planet. This is how the gut senses the environment and this signals are transmitted to the brain via the vagus nerve. Modern biochemistry books and biochemists stop here…They immediately go to what we know about energy generation in cells. But I am focusing in on what they have failed to realize.

When dietary carbohydrates are high it stimulates the eutherian mammal to begin to upregulate omega 6 content into every cell membrane of their body slowly through the autumn while temperature falls. It speeds up as the temperature drops in winter. This process is completely independent of dietary sources as I laid out in CT-3. Why does this occur in all mammals? Because to cell membranes to function in cold weather it requires all land based mammals from cold adapted ancestors to have an EFA ratio of 4:1 for optimal signaling. The reason is tied to mitochondria. Mitochondrial function improves in colder conditions. In water based mammals who are cold adapted, like whales, walrus, and seals they face steeper temperature gradients in the water that require a much lower EFA ratio (essential fatty acids) in their cell membranes to function properly.

This lowered ratio of EFAs also changes the biology of adipocyte biochemistry. It favors the accumulation of surface fat but not of visceral fat. Visceral fat is used to burn first to maintain core temperature in these animals. In land based cold adapted mammals like the polar bear the same is true. When they emerge from their den in spring they are shredded of all visceral fat and no longer insulin resistant, and have the biggest and strongest muscles they will have all year. Their body composition is at its best at this time. They accomplish all this without needing any exercise or food to do so.

This is in counter distinction to modern man beliefs. Why is this? The question is more complicated than the answer. The answer is again, simple. Modern man is further down the evolutionary path and a product of a faster evolution. He uses all the parts of the physical world to generate energy to his advantage. This means his evolutionary development was the product of a sped up epigenetic process for some reason. In essence, epigenetics also speeds up as time elapses. This allowed for the human brain to develop faster than our body plan because our diet radical changed from our immediate ancestors, the chimpanzee.

This ability caused two simultaneous evolutionary adaptations to occur simultaneously. As our brain expanded, our guts shrunk in length. We only needed a smaller gut when we become adapted to eat predominantly fat and protein from animals. A diet high in fat and protein was also used to fuel encephalization of hominids. Larger brains meant we needed pelvic changes to become bipedal and it also extinguished the need to hibernate. Hibernation needs were shrunk into our sleep cycle during stage 3 and 4 sleep. As we became smarter we became able to control our environment. This is how a sped up epigenetic plan set up modern man to become more susceptible to many biochemical mismatches.

When our recent ancestors lost the ability to hibernate, they also lost their best way to fight insulin resistance. Cold shreds us of fat normally. Since those ancestor mammals ate carbohydrates in a proper circadian cycles, purely controlled by their seasonal growth, the biochemical systems in those mammals readily adapted to these new states without much problem. This biologic adaptation required alteration of the leptin receptor to function with higher levels of cytokines present. It appears natural selection also made adjustments to liver biochemistry and bioenergergenics to mirror those changes made in the brain.

Every eutherian mammal born on this planet up until 2.5 million years ago had to live by the dictums of their environment. When hominids evolved, much later, this situation radically was altered. Hominids remain the only mammal on the planet who can 100{a7b724a0454d92c70890dedf5ec22a026af4df067c7b55aa6009b4d34d5da3c6} control its own environment. This allows our species to create mismatches at great speed, as our brain continued to develop over the last 2.5 million years. This trend dramatically speeds up all our chemical clocks in every cell of our body that is controlled by circadian biology. This is well known by modern science.

The Nobel Prize of 2009 tied this all to telomere lengths in our cells. All mammals have circadian signaling hardware in their brains that wire directly to the cell cycle machinery in every single cell of their bodies. This means that modern hominids are the most sensitive mammal to any circadian mismatch compared to their ancestors. Moreover, since they have the most advanced brain in the mammalian family, they are subjected to the greatest risk of neolithic diseases due to these mismatches. Humans get diseases that no other wild animal gets for this reason. Humans get autoimmune disease when our most recent ancestors, the chimp can not. They do not have zonulin and we do. The reason is because our guts are adapted to different diets that lead to our encephalazation. Animals domesticated by humans suffer the same fates as we do, ironically. Wild mammals tend not to get these issues because they live by the rule that Mother Nature determines for them in their own selected environments.

The ultimate paradox of modern hominids is that they evolved the ability to live on a warm adapted diet and in a warm environment, but that they retain the cold adapted biochemistry buried in their brains even though they do not need to use it presently. Evolution has not extinguished this ability for a very good reason, in my view. One reason is that the geologic record shows that our planet undergoes cyclic cooling and warming over longer epochs. This will keep the pathway active epigenetically over thousands of years. The main reason it has not been extinguished in my opinion, is that this ancient pathway determines ultimate survival of the mammalian species and it was vital at one time in evolutionary history. Modern hominids have an advanced nervous system, but they still are tied to the evolutionary family they come from long ago. They are not divorced from the rules of Mother Nature even though they act as if they are. This ties modern humans directly back to Factor X. The paradox is that they remain blind to it even today.

Radical Theory #7: Since modern hominids are unaware of the thermoplastic nature of their own biochemistry, they have never controlled for it in any modern biochemical study or study on nutrition. biology does not realize mitochondria function can be improved by cold surface temperatures. This is why neurosurgeons use cold in head trauma cases where the brain is swollen. The brain has the highest density of mitochondria in it so when it swells for any reason it is because either electron transport has slowed or because pseudohypoxia or frank hypoxia has developed. Pseudohypoxia is how hibernation begins in most mammals. This means that any assumptions made in biochemical dogma now needs to be questioned. The hints of these paradoxes are found in NASA astronauts, the Sherpa abilities, Vasper Technology, Russian Winter Olympic dominance, Lance Armstrong’s ability to beat cancer and win 7 races, Michael Phelps eight gold medals in one Olympics, Wim Hof’s amazing abilities, and the use of cold in human transplantation harvesting, and modern neurosurgical procedures bring these paradoxes to life.

They show us today they are not paradoxes at all. As we gain wisdom, we see the magic in things because our senses grow sharper. Reality is that which, when we stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. These “paradox” remain abilities that evolution built into our ancestors and that were passed down into our genome and hardwired into our brain for a reason. We remain blinded to it because few modern humans live in this environment today. Today this remains completely unstudied as our population, while they get more sick and mediocre with each passing decade. Elite athletes are the first humans to push these boundaries and to open our eyes to this possibility that this may exist. We are in inning one of this ballgame right now.

Radical Theory # 8: Modern life and its technology is as bad to us as a vegan or SAD diet. Lab results we draw on people show this. Cortisol patterns and hormone panels are a mess in humans when they are studied. Moreover, eating an ancestral paleolithic diet is a better choice than others, but it can hide the cellular effect of stem cell depletion by other forms of modern circadian mismatches. technology use at night is an easy one. Modern paleo’s make this mistake way to often.

The risk of a Paleo diet for them is that the diet is so good in some respects that it could blind your consciousness that you might be depleting your life force at the very same time. You will see this in an altered redox potential. This will show up when disease develops in the back half of your life span. This implies that what you think is really safe………may not be safe at all. Light after sunset from technology is as bad as eating the wrong diet for our Ferrari engines and our brains because it destroys the cortisol diurnal rhythms. And it means that your ultimate proof wont come until its too late for reversal………unless you prove it to yourself today by testing.

Radical Theory #9: Modern humans cannot out exercise/supplement bad choices from diet or from technology. Modern life is plain stressful and can hurt us even if we remain oblivious to it. Moreover, just eating an ancestral template, while over exercising like mad and eating safe starches 24/7, is not justified by your activity level. If you also play on you computers, iPhone, and ipad all night long, and think it has no biologic consequences to your stem cells is a neolithic thought that just might kill you early.

Trying to get all cute and use food and supplements to hide bad decisions won’t work either. Just increasing resveratrol, curcumin, and metformin won’t allow you to “out supplement” poor choices. Exercise must be hormetic and within our circadian cycles too. If it’s not, you will become a dead marathon runner or a ex-NFL player with a short life span who people wonder why and how that body crashed so fast? You can’t fool your telomeres, but you can fool yourself with your thoughts or “feelings”. The quality of your health is a summation of great decisions consistently. These decisions are all based upon the quality of your thoughts presently

Radical Theory #10: Your modern beliefs are usually the cause of your ultimate decline. Become fully aware that the human mind is a wonderful servant but usually is a horrible master. This will be a tough one for you to swallow because it was for me; but it is an ultimate truth. We are often our own worst enemy. This is why we often why we see success in going against the grain in Wall Street, Medicine, and in fish, like salmon. Our community must beware of this rule. The paleo tribe are experts at using modern technology to help it move forward, but if it is not applied correctly it might make you a good looking corpse with no stem cells when your telomeres are too short to change it. I do not want you to believe me. On the contrary, I want you to test me! You can check my theory easily yourself. Draw your own telomere test right now at Spectracell labs and test your own dogma.

Radical Theory #11: Cold adapted mammals can do things warm adapted ones can’t because at extremes chemistry, physics, and biology change when the temperature is colder. All biochemical reactions slow down in cold so Mother Nature responded to this environmental challenge by speeding up epigenetics. This is where Factor X plays its largest role in mammalian biology to compensate for the slowing of biochemistry to speed up reproduction for survival. 90{a7b724a0454d92c70890dedf5ec22a026af4df067c7b55aa6009b4d34d5da3c6} of life on this planet is cold adapted as we speak today. Our anthropocentric point of view has resulted in the classification of cold-adapted organisms as extremophiles, even though environments of permanently cold temperatures (around 0°C) abound on Earth, especially when one considers that these include not only the polar and alpine regions, but also deep-sea waters.

Geek Alert: Psychrophiles, both prokaryotic and eukaryotic, have successfully colonized these cold environments and are able to grow efficiently at sub-zero temperatures. This adaptation requires a vast array of structural and physiological adjustments in order to counteract the reduction in chemical reaction rates due to the low temperature of the habitat. Most scientists study human physiology in mesophilic environmental conditions. This is a big problem. The reason is that humans have completely different abilities in cold and the resultant physiologic changes are often 180 degrees opposite that one would expect. This fact has blinded many scientists and physicians to some deep realities about human biology. Recently, fish have been found in our polar seas that are believed to be over 10,000 years old.

Organic Biochemist Geek Alert: Temperature is one of the most important environmental factors for life as it influences most biochemical reactions. Low temperatures slow down and strongly inhibit chemical reaction rates catalyzed by enzymes, the ‘work- horses’ of cell metabolism. The effect of temperature on chemical reactions is basically described by the Arrhenius equation: k = Ae -Ea/RT , where k is the rate constant, A is Ea is the so-called activation energy, R is the gas constant (8.31 kJ mol ~1) and T is the temperature in kelvins. Accordingly, any decrease in temperature will induce an exponential decrease of the reaction rate, the extent of which depends on the value of the activation energy. The thermodependence of the activity can be approximately expressed by the Q10 value that is normally close to 2- 3. This is the main factor preventing the growth, at low temperatures, of non-adapted organisms. So biochemistry of cold says we should have slow growth patterns based upon the biochemistry. I told you earlier that evolution has sped up tremendously as time has gone on. So the question remains is, how did evolution overcome slower growth? Since the cell cycle was slowed by cold it sped up epigenetics to compensate for the slower growth. That is the basis of Factor X. It is the most important part of my theory because it is why the human brain was naturally selected for in a mismatched environment. It is an evolutionary factor by itself.

Radical Theory #12: The Ancient Mammalian Pathway naturally selects for the cold adapted Epi-paleo diet in all cold adapted eutherian mammals. To access this food source their nervous systems were adapted to remain insensate to pain after and adaptation period. This period differs across species but it is present even in humans after two weeks of peripheral surface cold sensation.

The best food source then for a cold adapted mammals biochemistry would be a ketogenic version of the paleolithic diet (Epi-paleo Rx) that has a high omega 3 content. The reason is simple. More omega 3’s are needed in cold environments to provide for accurate cell membrane signaling due to increased double bounds in their chemical structures of DHA.

VLC Warning: VLC in a warm adapted world has serious limitations. Be aware of them.

Paleo Diet with Metcons: carries even larger risks for the modern human.

Radical Theory #13: The leptin receptor is primordially a cold based electron counter for nutrients from foods. I think it evolved the ability to function in warm environments as mammals evolved onto land and took the planet over. Our earliest ancestors however began in the cold polar seas and on cold polar land masses. The biochemistry we know today in textbooks only represents the warm adapted mammalian pathways, and as such, are not complete in my view.

Training Fiction: Carbs are mandatory. The work of Volek, Phinney, Attia, and many others are pulling the veil back that ketosis is most efficient mammalian fuel in the cold, and not carb loading. Carb loading is a thought born of only understanding the warm adapted mammalian pathways. There are numerous examples of athletes using the cold adapted pathways having superior performance to the warm adapted pathways. The issue is that too few have decided to access it because it takes 24-36 months to reach those peak levels. The Sherpa’s remain the best example of this in today’s modern world. They have been extensively studied by NASA.

This blind spot needs to be studied in depth by modern day scientists who are not just elite coaches. Burning fat (FFA) actually increases our VO2max and proton flow when the ancient pathway is induced. This information is directly in counter distinction to published data because we remain unaware of the cold adapted pathways in humans. It is currently unstudied, but we have numerous examples of humans with exceptional performance in cold environments that few can explain until now.

At extremes, biochemistry changes in nature for our benefit. Evolution has a plan for this because it tapped it many times before. REALIZE THAT modern trainers are oblivious to this therefore they regurgitate what is best from the literature that is based upon mammals who are warm adapted eating a warm adapted diet! Can you say major mismatch! The best example of this today is the technology of Vasper which can not be explained by the published data in modern exercise physiology books. This should be a huge clue that we are missing some major factors. Vasper is a known entity in NASA research. Vasper has licensed the NASA technology generated from the Sherpa’s in the 1970’s.

Radical Theory #14: Why do humans remain blind to all this? They never face a true winter any longer as do other wild mammals. Behavioral adaptation is most important for the survival of human species. It includes e.g., well heated houses, good thermal insulation of clothing, warm vehicles and short exposures to cold. In fact, behavioral adaptation can work so well, that no physiological adaptation is developed in winter, as shown in young urban residents. These neolithic creations are why we do not see the metabolic benefits of this pathway in modern humans often. When modern humans become aware of them and their benefits they may consider building a small part of their current environment for cold thermogenesis.

Modern humans may find that when they cold adapt it will help treat diseases due to mismatches in circadian biology.
Warm clothes and buildings are neolithic creations that kept us in the dark about the ancient pathways benefits. Wild mammals can’t do what our brain allows us to do. Mismatches are not just not good for humans in our modern world where it constantly seems like it is summer time due to artificial light and 24/7 access to carbohydrates.

Radical Theory #15: Neolithic diseases of aging is total cellular chaos……health is perfect cellular order, in between is cellular mediocrity. We need to decide are searching for optimal or not. Optimal requires a cold adapted physiology………..sub optimal is found on the pathways in most modern biochemistry books.

I have a question. I’ve been doing CT cold baths for 3 1/2 weeks now. I’m having feet pain in the tub for the last 15 min of my 45 min 50-55F bath. For the first 30 minutes I’m good to go, some shivering sometimes but then my feet hurt from just being cold. When I get out everything is a lovely cherry red. I’ve had cold hands & feet since childhood-so I’m assuming it’s related to that but I’m wondering do I push through or back off?

Every one of these CT blogs just blows me away! Thank you from the bottom of my soon to be cold adapted heart. I now live my life to find new ways to get cold adapted. The daily baths, a cooling vest, kiddie pool in back yard, and I’m sure I will come up with more…just give me some time.

Just awesome! Regarding the VLC warning, I have problems everytime I get keto…and they are mainly at night. If I eat my carbs in the morning, I still have anxiety or other issues at night. Any suggestions? Everything has improved SO much though and this is just one tweak I need to figure out.

@Brenda the keto version of the paleo diet works best in cold…….not in warm. Thos who eat this way and remain warm will have bad body comp but keep their stem cells intact. The news is worse for the non keto paleo diet with metcons…….

I have a question about ketosis. I have just started using Ketostix and find that eating even very small amount of hard cheese (2-3T in a day) will dump me out of ketosis. Since cheese is very high in fat, this doesn’t really make any sense. Is this normal for other people or is this some unique personal metabolic effect?

@Cu you can but in cold you do not need too…….a polar gets ripped by hibernating. A human gets quite healthy improving their sleep as well. Become cold Dark and sleepy and watch your life improve. I tell everyone now I am boring……because this is how I roll. In Austin I was dying for sleep recovery. Took me a week to get back together.

After studying wildlife in the artic there is a catepillar that has adapted because of the short growing season to freeze itself over the long winter and then thawe itself out in the spring with out any side effects..except one, most catepillars only live one season, this catepillar lives an incredible 10 years, the animal kingdom has not forgoten its pathway,they embrace it as should we.

I just realized I’ve survived the 1st 1/2 of spring seasonal allergies w/o a single problem. I’ve been at it 8wks – pretty positive that CT is the reason why! this is the first time I’ve been allergy free in my life! wondering if now of this works on severe allergies to cats too?

With almost summer-like temps, it is more challenging to get tub water at a good temp for CT without lots of ice. Thus, I have migrated to spot CT w/ my Ice-Brix. Also, began soaking my feet in sub 40 degree water for 30 min. (surprisingly easy and feels good). Given the high number of nerves in our feet, how much of a CT benefit can I expect?

@Shinkin, hubby and I have been on the reset since 2/21 and both have normally horrible allergies and sinus issues, awful gunk coming out our noses in the shower in the a.m….. NORMALLY. NORMALLY when hubby is in a room with cats and dogs his eyes start to water in mere minutes. NORMALLY. Since the reset, heads have cleared up, no more gunk, and hubby spent hours in a room with cats and dogs and only later realized he didn’t have an allergic reaction.

So…. yes I am thinking it is the reset, as it’s the only thing we’ve both done differently! Life-changing! I bet it will work on your cat allergies too

I was diagnosed with otosclerosis in my right ear many years ago. I decided not to treat it as it was not severe. After 10 months of paleo and 6+ wks of CT I think i am hearing better in that ear. Is this possible? I will see an audiologist and find out if there really has been improvement.

I just watch the sunset up here in Toronto , Canada & this morning seen the sun rise for the first time in maybe twenty years of working night/afternoon shifts {No More !!!}. I transfer to a day position & have been laughing all morning … everyone thinks I’ve gone mad , but I never felt better .

I’m back to CT today with a cold bath, 55 degrees, 30 minutes, after a protein/fat meal (eggs and beef). I’ve had a cold so stopped the CT but now I’m hoping the CT will help me get rid of this cold. Hoping to wake up better. Thanks Dr. Kruse.

Jack, I live in Florida, the temps are 70-90 already, pool water is 85. Water comes out of the spigot at 80 (which to me is “cold” because I have been taking very hot showers for years.)

I am eating low carb, only adding in dairy a bit to get a little in. I have only been trying to get colder water a bit, not worked down to the 55 degree tub yet. But thanks for addressing this, because I was wondering a couple weeks ago if trying to cold adapt when it’s 85 degrees here was going to be another mismatch of biology.

So I am guessing that I should be trying to simulate Autumn here, and as I slowly cold adapt, I should be slowly cutting back carbs? To the point that once I am able to do the 3-5 times per week ice bath, I should at that point be VLC? Is VLC <25? Am I ok with this 25-50 present range? I don't really want the carbs, they just make me anxious.

Jack, this is such a wild concept, is anyone else talking about this? Think of all the other systems, and rhythms in our body we just dont know about? The possibilities are endless.

Two things though, i want more info on. Polar bears, that you mention, are they really their strongest after hybernation? Cant people argue they lose all their fat because they dont eat for 6 months, and anyone would have similiar results?

And the michael phelps example, yea, he is in a cold pool all day every day but he burns 20k calories a day. If he was in a warm pool, or running to burn that many calories he would have the same results no?

@Ian The key link for Phelps, Armstrong the Sherpa’s and astronauts is they all use cold in some fashion but none of them optimize it……..My point is that we have this pathway built into us all for an evolutionary reason. I think I know what the reason is…….and by three experiments I did on myself all tested that theory. So far every human I have used it on has seen results……..that tells me it is in us and we rarely tap it. As ofr Polar bears…….they shred their fat and their muscles are at their peak when they come out of the Den……..the cold increases them while they shred their fat. The same thing happens to humans who sleep well and who cold adapt.

I have been trying to get cold adapted. I am pretty successful at face dunks. Cold showers less so. My last session, I was successful at bringing my cold well water spray up to my waist but no further. After that session, I have been chilled and have not desired to do any CT training. The idea just does not set well. I had a stroke 2 Octobers ago, and I was hoping the CT would force nerve growth in my brain stem as well as help my diet. Jack have you any stroke victims reporting any benefits?

Thanks for this post. Every few years I write a letter to my children when I find out something that I did not know when they were growing up. I will use parts of this in my letter. Perhaps someone will take it to heart.

I have been using a combo of cool baths and altitude. The results seem unreal since I haven’t been doing any exercise. After the 3rd altitude and two weeks of 3xweek coolbaths @70 deg. I had to exert myself walking rapdily up an incline I dependably take twice a year. This time there was absolutely no effort involved. I even ran up 2 flights of stairs that I used to struggle with. I even tried it twice to check it out. That same evening I went back up the mountain and was amazed that I had energy to do it even with a full workday that I hadn’t done in the last 4 months. Remember I am 70 yo. I did my usual hour walkabout after my pro and fat meal then drank 2 glasses of icewater. Just as i was going to catch the tram someone stopped me to talk. The windchill was probably 20 degrees and after the icewater I began to shiver and finally got away to get on the tram. The next day I had massive body pain and took a couple of doses of ASA. Am I right that this was mostly a toxic dump of inflamation? Because the morning after that it was gone.
Two days later I went up again. Each time the HR remained as before but this time I rehearsed singing 3 of my songs and later started a breath exercise at about 1/2 the rate. During this time I had more lightheadedness and dizziness which continued off and on after I came down. Did i dump too much co2? I have excellent breath support and a good lung capacity. Or again was this a symptom of toxin dump? I broke my diet schedule and had hot tea with butter and figured the caffeine might help. Any suggestions of what to do or what to read would help me make adjustments to what I’m doing. I’ve been using the altitude and CT alternating. Should I be using the CT when I get the body pain even if it’s the same day? Thanks. sorry for the length.

Thanks for your willingness to share. I have been “paleo for a couple of years, and have been getting stricter with my diet as time goes on. I have either beef heart or beef liver 2-3 times a week for breakfast, barely cooked in coconut oil. I sleep in a blacked out room with the windows open in the winter and AC in the summer. I have been a barefoot water skier for 20 years and the best months to go are March, April, May, and September, October, and November. Flat water is needed, and many times we have the lake to ourselves during these months. We wear dry suits, and have coolers of hot water to put our feet and hands in after being in the lake. Very exuberating to be skiing on the water at 45 mph. It really makes you feel alive. I have been working out 3-4 times a week with P90x, I like the variety. I also do Tabata sprints once or twice a week. I have been trying something new that only takes a few minutes. It’s called vascular occlusion training. I put tourniquets below my knees, at the top of my thighs, and on my armpits. I then do some whole body squats, presses, curls, etc with very light weights for on about 10 to 15 minutes. Then I lay in a cold bath with ice on my stomach. I have been watching the Michael Palin series Himalaya recently. The sherpas in episodes 4 and 5 are amazing. They are carrying 80 lb. basket packs up to Mount Everest base camp, wearing shorts and flip flops. They don’t look like they could weight over 150 lbs.
Thanks for the information on Cold Thermogenesis, I think that has been the missing part of my life style for optimal health.

@Scott Jenkins the vascular occlusion to CT is a precisely what Vasper does. NASA uses this in the space station for astronauts. I think you are doing it correctly. Add CT and I bet your cold tolerance goes up. Soon you may not need a wet suit. What the Sherpa’s can do is nothing short of amazing……….

@Desia I dont not know because I have not used it for this. But as I have said on my forum the real mechanism of CT is to reduce cytokines to extremely low levels. This would destroy your HS CRP. IN FH the inflammation and oxidation potential of the serum is the biggest issue and not the LDL level. If I had FH I would certainly be CTing like a mad man and trending my HS CRP over a few years.

@Scott Jenkins I’ve been doing occlusion training too. It’s been pretty astonishing. I’ve put over an inch on my arms in about 2 months. Now if only I could figure out a way to work in the cold and the occlusion… Oh wait, that’s Vasper.

Interested in your comments about cold adaption and physiology of lactate levels as it pertains to this quote about Michael Phelps. Is this a function of CT/Cold Adaption and if so, what is the mechanism? Have you tested your levels after intense exercise? Seems like I see references to this in Vasper’s materials as well.

“Low Blood Lactate Level – In simple explanation, lactic acid is produced by human body in muscle cells during exercise. Accumulation of lactic acid occurs when the supply of oxygen to the cells is limited because the muscle cells are working so hard. So, indirectly, the less lactic acid one has, the better he can perform in his next race. A US researcher specializing in swimmer physiology, has done some test on Micheal Phelps. Even after swimming, Phelps’ lactate count was 5.6 (5.6 millimoles of lactate per liter of blood). How about other swimmers? Out of 5,000 other competitive swimmers being tested, all of them has level more than 10. In other words, the uncommon low number of lactate is so significant in Phelps’ body. His muscles recover faster than almost everyone after workout and race. This uniqueness has enabled him to compete so many events within such a short time, yet breaking records, one after another. In Beijing Olympic alone, he has swum more than 25 miles and over 1,000 laps at Water Cube, including preliminary and semifinal heats.”

@Kevin it is a hormetic effect of low O2 tension in the muscle that stimulates mitochondrial biogenesis It is a hormetic affect additive to the cold. But cold thermogenesis in and of itself also reduces lactic acid production……and it crescendos after 24 months of training…….this is why Lance and Phelps are really special…..unlike the rest of athletes they took the Pathway to its limit. Too bad they did not eat for the pathway because I believe there is more performance North of what they did.

“When people reach exhaustion, their muscles build up acid, which causes the muscles to stop contracting. But Armstrong’s muscles produce about half as much acid as the average person’s muscles do when they get fatigued. This allows him to recover much faster than other people.”

Again, a reference to lactic acid levels 1/2 of his peers. Cold Adaption? Seems like another marker that could be tested, yes?

I am also having issues with my skin adapting too fast. I already use compression and the ice won’t get my skin below 65 degrees now. I used to have take the ice out because it was going below 50 in the beginning. Now how do I get my skin in that 50-55 degree range again since I am already using compression? Quite amazing at how we adapt!

Jack Kruse Says:
The best food source then for a cold adapted mammals biochemistry would be a ketogenic version of the paleolithic diet that has a high omega 3 content. The reason is simple. More omega 3’s are needed in cold environments to provide for accurate cell membrane signaling due to increased double bounds in their chemical structures.

@Jan Nuts, good fats like Avacado’s, olive, olive oils……are human sources of 06 that are not compromised. Humans should also eat animals that are pastured to have an 4:1 level. Mammals eat animals with the proper EFA ratio’s. Modern humans do not.

Dr. would it be ok to do CT with the Bulletproof Rapid Fat Loss Protocol?

Also, did .2ml of 5% progesterone cream for 14 days last month and told you I gained 3lbs in a few days on it and was agitated. Now I have breakthrough bleeding 3 days after stopping my period (it is light). Is this from CT, progesterone, or the pregnenolone? Not sure if I should do the Tri-est & progesterone this month or what?

Dr Kruse, thanks for your response, and ALL your responses! I use two pair of very tight lycra/cotton bicycle shorts (that I’ve modified to hold the ice between.) Compression enough?

Bit of a false credit to my claim. I went from using my homemade water/rubbing alcohol icepacks to store-bought “ice-cube-like” sheets this past week. Today I switched back, and I’m down back to 54 degrees. So a ways to go yet. However, there are obvious signs that I’m becoming more cold-adapted. For instance, before CT two months ago I used a down comforter,a second comforter, flannel pjs and sheets, and fuzzy socks and was still cold at night. Now, I use a single sheet in a colder room and have slept like a rock this past week.

Dr. Kruse, your writing makes me think of Mozart, the way the brilliant music flowed out of him so fast. I mean this sincerely and as a compliment: if you would hire someone to edit your writings you seriously might just change the world!

@Scott Sterling. I am not interested in an editor, but I do have one now…..I think. But they have changed some blogs already but no one is reading the old one’s they changed. I write them and post them. This is a hobby for me. I help and change people in my clinic. I have a duty to them. I post here what I am finding. If people want help they can find it here among the spelling errors and grammar issues. If you focus in on the small things you lose on the big things in life…….Evolution is not an easy process either. Those who adapt to things they dont like, win and live…….those who don’t, die. Its the user’s choice to focus on the small things of the big things. Since I have been doing this for 8 months I think I have been doing something correctly, based upon how many are coming and the email’s I get. I do the best I can.

If you want perfectly executed blog posts without information that can change your life, there is a lot of bloggers out there in our community to choose from. They are great at reviewing studies that have no impact on making you optimal or fixing your issues. Some of them do not even take comments, more less answer them all. If you want optimal you’ll deal with the small stuff here. I make no apologies. I am a busy person.

After experimenting with “safe” carbs and gaining 20 pounds while experiencing crazy cravings for Dove ice cream bars (two boxes at a sitting!), I’ve gone back to low carb and started eating a big protein-filled breakfast for the last 10 days or so. Results: 7 pounds lost, cravings gone.

CT has been great too. No DOMS from lifting, which I attribute to CT. Strength and muscle size increases, which is pretty nice at age 44. Cold adaptation is coming right along too.

@Jim I’ll do that. I like him and I think that he’s got a lot of things right and what he says works for some people. But obviously not for me. His diet may not be optimal, but it’s certainly a lot better than SAD.

I’m with you and have almost adapted myself (Fasted State Training guy 😉 )and can see the gains first hand. I’m also looking at it from biochemistry stand-point and have just a few things to iron out:

1. Glycogen depleted increases gluconeogenesis. As this raises Ammonia production, is this not counter productive ?

2. With threshold and high intensity training (so when Lance is riding at 70-80% VO2max)… I have never seen a single athlete who can keep there RER at 0.7… it always rises. Have you ever seen an athlete that can exercise at high effort while staying in a complete fat oxidative mode ?? I think it can be upregulated, definitely, but if you are an elite endurance athlete, doing sub 2.30hr marathons or riding in the Tour de France, can ATP demands be met via complete beta oxidation ? Even if you haven’t witnessed it, do you think it is theoretically possible ??

@Barry the CT also affect lactic acid production is greatly diminished in CT. So there is clearly a benefit. I am now doing a bio hack on this issue and the new Vasper company uses this as well. I am also now using changes in barometric pressure…….to see its affects.

Hi Dr. Kruse, I got an email that you are going to be on Abel James radio show tomorrow. Do you have notification of your talks/appearances somewhere on your blog? Look forward to hearing you tomorrow. ~Thanks

Natural girl…I tried pregnenalone and progesterone before CT and had major agitation, palpitations and other problems. I believe CT (and paleo) has completely and more naturally increased the hormones I needed to increase…I am so happy not to be trying to figure out the right amounts of pregnenalone, progesterone to use. Hopefully you will have a similar experience.

Dr. Jack, quick question for you. When I CT my toes go numb after I am done (not during) even though I don’t put them in the water. I do put the bottom half of my foot in the water though. I was curious about why it is after that they go numb plus why would a body part not submerged experience this effect. As always, thanks so much!

@Larry its common…..I write about this in my book. It is because our spinothalamic tract covers three dermotomes above and below the decussation of where the pain and temperature fibers cross in the spinal cord. Its normal.

Just did my first labs since last fall, when I eliminated carbs (I was already low carb) and went “great white shark” for the winter.

The results are alarming. I am now severely hypothyroid (high TSH, normal fT4, low fT3), my LDL is through the roof, and my fasting glucose has gone from a healthy level to pre-diabetic. In other words, exactly what the safe starch crowd says will happen.

What can I do? If the answer is CT, well…I have been doing CT religiously for over a month, and my pilot light has yet to turn on. When I get out of the cold tub, I stay cold. If I do it after dinner, I freeze through the night and sleep poorly. Overall, I am cold and miserable — exactly what conventional wisdom would expect from a hypothyroid person who exposes himself to cold and shuns heat!

I want to prove the safe starch crowd and CT naysayers wrong, but so far my n=1 is not encouraging.

@MM one month is not a lot of CT to light your light. TRH will drive it but you can easily get your doc to start you on some bioidentical T3 while you continue to CT. Or you can try PHD way and see how it works……yoru choice. My choice would be to step up CT and try a small dose of T3 and follow your labs closely.

Dr. Kruse I just spent some time reading a ton of paleo people discussing their low carb “flu” symptoms and so many of them seem to sound like low seratonin symptoms. Would tryptophan alleviate this for some and if so how much would you recommend to someone who is low on seratonin? I am paleo, CTing and leptin resetting.

so do compression gear (shirts, ace bandages) make CT more effective. I thought I remembered one of your CT blogs saying to start with them then get rid if them as one adapts. Would you sort that out for me? Thanks for your help!

Dr. Kruse, thank you for taking the time to answer so very many questions. Two issues:
First, do you recommend liver support if people undergo rapid weight loss as you did, to protect against rapid release of stored fat soluble toxins (Glutathione, Silymarin, Taurine, NAC, etc)?
Second, you recommend PPQ, but do you feel that ALCAR, ALA and/or Co-Q10 have benefits or detriments for CT?
Thanks for any insight you can provide!

@MM #82 – I dropped my carbs from 75-80g/day down to 50g/day for the winter and my lab results were similar. Total Cholesterol and LDL way up, TSH and glucose up a bit and A1C result says I’m pre-diabetic.

Hi Dr. Jack, this is my guess as to what Factor X is. It is frequency. Two letters, Hz for hertz. When humans were bombarded with constant cold, Mother Nature increased our cycle frequency so that we could hibernate each night instead of hibernating for eternity because of the neverending cold. So it’s like a fractal: a small cycle within a bigger cycle. Just my guess!

After reading your recent comments on using compression gear, I wore a compression shirt and shorts last night in the shower and it was a great combo because I felt like I got used to the cold water (probably around 50F) quicker but then I definitely got more cherry red afterwards when compared to showers without the gear. I’ll keep it up while I’m adapting, which will take awhile because my CT’ing only involves cold showers and AC in the car (baths are thrown in when possible).

@Dr. Kruse – Good point, I’ll start doing the same. By the way, work is so warm now following my ride in with the windows down and the AC on lol

Two Questions: My hands and feet take a bit to warm up after CT (cold shower/tub, AC in the car) currently. Should I expect this to improve as I adapt and if it gets better, should I take that as a good sign that I’m close to adapted? Would taking Krill Oil to improve my O6-3 ratio help speed this up? Also, once someone is adapted like you are, do you just get in your cold pool and feel fine or does it still take some time to ‘numb up'(3-5 minutes for me)? Thanks!

@Mark I have been doing this so long cold just does not bother me much……..I will say when I suspended CT in Oct1-Jan 8 I craved ice badly…….for a long time. On January 9th 3 PM I really needed it. 120lbs of it.

@Dr. Kruse – I just wanted to add that I think Richard Nikoley hit the nail on the head with his post yesterday when he said that it was something that he couldn’t get away from, despite how tough the first couple of minutes are (referring to the cold water plunges that he used to take PWO at his old gym). So far for me, CT’ing is still a mental battle for the first part (3-5 minutes) but I keep using it because I feel so good afterwards. Example: Last night I was feeling sleepy and had no energy, so I took a 15-minute cold shower with compression gear and then I felt great afterwards. I’d say the lead up to each CT session is similar to what Crossfitter’s go through: get nervous and anxious about the WOD, but then attack it and feel happy when it’s over (I know, I used to be one)

@Mark Richard has been using CT in an infantile forum. I think he really intrigued where I am going…….I also told him Factor X and he is now even more than intrigued. I did not tell all the details…….but he now knows all CT theory is tied to evolution……..and that is what paleo is all about. Its not Jack Kruse’s info……..it is Mother Nature’s. I just picked up the correct rock and am letting sunshine hit upon it for modern humans benefit.

@Stipetic I was probably being too coy (and a bit off, now that I think about it). The epigenetic theory relating to the evolutionary event that your CT is at least partially based upon has been pioneered by a gentleman from the University of Illinois, right? And Factor X is related to the physical–some may say chemical –aftermath of that evolutionary event, no? Sorry for being coy, I’m trying not to give anything away that you probably would not want given away at this time.

@Stipetic No……it is based upon an event than the evolutionary record of species fossils and their development. All known facts in several branches of science outside of biology. It’s got nothing to do with the University of Illinois.

Dr Kruse introduced those of us who have been following his blog to the Leptin Rx and the CT protocol in a controlled step by step manner. He has said that we need to advance slowly and build as we become adapted individually. I am concerned that new readers may not appreciate the power of what we are doing here. Dr. Kruse has said it is “brain surgery without a scalpel”. As we find ourselves enjoying the benefits of adapting to the cold, similar to Wim Hof, it would behoove all of us who would encourage our friends, family and acquaintances to try CT, to be aware of the risks of advancing to quickly. I recently read the joint book by Wim Hof and Justin Rodalis entitled “Becoming the Iceman”. http://becomingtheiceman.com/ I strongly encourage anyone interested in this process to spend a few dollars on this book. Justins part of the story of how he traveled to Poland to spend a week with the “Iceman” Wim Hof and discover how he does the things he does. There is a lot to learn here. Perhaps most importantly in Chapter 47 under Justins method, he describes how he subjected his girlfriend to hypothermia in an attempt to teach her CT. He had shown her he could sit in the iced water for 15 minutes and she was trying it for the first time. She lost her ability to think clearly and make decisions and resisted getting out saying she was warm. Justin writes “It was the scariest moment of both of our lives. I never want anyone to experience what she did. So I implore you to heed caution when attempting any of these exercises, especially with the Full-Body Immersions. Take heed and always keep safety as your main priority.” I urge you all to read the full account of that days CT session in the book. Justin was doing the same procedure we all have been doing.

@Jack – Quick question: How do you know the difference between urticaria and a detox rash? The rash I have is about the level of my navel but more outwards toward the love handle region more on both sides. It itches like crazy and can be warm to the touch. I only seem to have it in this area though. Started off as individual bumps but those grew and sort of merged more. Still individual bumps, but the entire area is red.

@Marijke No, Terry Wahl’s video and Wim Hof’s TED talks motivated me to get this info out to the public. It can help millions of people from their house without any fancy medical treatment. Soon you will all see the results in some video’s I have done on patients using CT pre and post operatively. The results are simply stunning.

@Dr. Kruse – Yeah, I have to keep reminding myself that I’ve only been at this for about a month and I’m not even doing the full protocol. But even still I’m now able to take a cold shower with the temp at the coldest possible, whereas before I had to start out around 75F and gradually get down to only about 60F (and that was only for like a couple of seconds at the end).

And now that I’ve been doing only cold showers for about two weeks, I could definitely see myself missing them if I no longer had access to them. I think when the summer gets in full swing and the water supply heats up, I’ll definitely be filling up the kiddie pool with ice.

Dr Kruse,-From my own experience using the Rx and CT, I haven’t seen any where near the weight loss you describe personally. I’m wondering if I missed something along the way or will you soon be uncovering the step that will allow us to benefit the way you did?

First serious post so first off topic question, were you on a statin when you tore your Knee? I think I found your site while looking for new information on statin side effects. I believe that I have permanent muscle damage. I have been on a low carbish diet since reading The No Grain Diet by Dr Mercola. My biggest aha moment came after reading Ron Rosedale’s leptin paper. His theory of insulin resistance being Mother Natures termination program as acted as a model for me and anyone who will listen. I cannot believe that that has been out there for over 10 years and we still treat T2d with insulin.

Second big aha moment came after reading tg8 and watching the Vasper video.http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=EqQkDmVhml4
I had started reading Dr Sinatra on spacedoc. net but just dismissed it. Are we going There?
I am 56 yo and can not walk around the block without lactic acid buildup. I had noticed that I was too cold to notice when walking the dog in shorts and short sleeves, wind chill 33. The dog gave up before I did.
So what is this about lactic acid triggering HGH release?
Pharmacists whose life was ruined by lipitor
ps hopeful ct will give it back
pss ct has done nothing for my reputation as off the wall crazy

@Greg R 1. No statins ever for me. 2. Rosedale work is great……but I am going different places than him. He got off the train and I am looking to push the science to the end point and I have found a lot more. His Paleo fx talk was all old news. He is not up to speed on Telomere biology at from Dr. Blackburn. He is a smart guy and I think he will get on board soon. He is still looking at Cynthia Kenyon’s old work. 3. CT and compression is off the chain for the hormone response…….that is all I am saying now. I am still pushing the science on myself.

@drjackkruse During Dr. Rosedale’s talk at Paleo f/x everything he mentioned was “I knew this 20 years ago”. I don’t recall him talking about anything since then. I agree with you that he is very smart, my friend had a long talk with him and was blown away. But I think he’s stuck in his current mindset. He’s basically agreeing with much of what you say, but he’s the kind of guy who reads papers and forms opinions, not the kind of guy who does self-experimentation. Once the science is there he’ll come around.

@Jim russell Ron is fabulous for the diabetics of the world…..he is truly way ahead of conventional medicine…….but I am going further but go further back into evolution for the ultimate answer……I think I have found it. People are upset that I am releasing it slowly but the theory is massive and it requires piecemeal digestion……but when I am done the answer is going to be an evolutionary one that few people will be able to argue with. The funny part of all this is that Rosedale has more clinical experience treating T2D than all paleo docs combined and yet there are small minded people who think he is dead wrong………Those people are actually given kudos by some in this community and it is a travesty. I dont agree with Ron on smaller points…….but the man has done some amazing clinical things in his career. He has my respect for that.

Concerning sleep, I’m noticing some nights I sleep phenomenally, while other nights I wake up around 3am. When I wake up then, I’m either wired and ready to go, and it’s difficult to fall asleep again. When my alarm goes off, I’m sometimes very sluggish; other times, not.

Now my question is this: Is this potentially a product of toxin release from fat stores overwhelming my liver on these nights?

Since I sometimes eat my last meal around 2pm, could I be stressing my liver too much to produce ketones for energy throughout the night (I usually fast from 2pm to 545am).

Originally I thought it was b/c I sometimes do jujitsu in the evening, cold shower, then sleep (which was just too much without eating since 2pm). But some nights when I only do a cold tub, I have same middle of the night response.

I’d like to think I’m just going through cycles of toxin release, which disturbs my sleep from time to time, but I want to make sure it’s not an underlying issue or poor eating strategy (BAB in the am; second/last meal about 8 hours later).

@Adam I have had a similar experience. When I do more CT, I tend to sleep very heavy and have trouble getting up when I want to at 4am (usually in bed by 9pm), but here and there I’ll wake up and feel great. It comes and goes. I asked Dr. Kruse about it before and he had a very similar response. I guess it’s just something that you have to go through while you’re adapting and detoxing.

@shinkin13: It took me about 5 weeks to clear, but I started out at low HSCRP (<0.5). My symptoms are gone now. My HSCRP went up to 5.0 during the detox, but I’d bet if I tested, it would be lower since my symptoms have abated.

Dr. Kruse, First off I want to thank you for all the information you are sharing with us – I have personally benefited greatly from following your leptin rx and CT (although am definitely not yet cold adapted). My question is – my hands and/or feet are often still cold, even if I do not personally feel cold (I keep the house between 62-65 degrees during the day). At night I sleep with the window open (35-40 degrees outside right now), but as soon as I fall asleep my hands and feet get very warm. The issue occurs only during the day. Is this a sign that my body is still trying to turn on my “pilot light” and I just need to keep doing CT, or am I missing something here?

‘All right. As long as you behave. Now get up and into the shower. First very hot, then very cold. Like a sauna.’ She waited. ‘Up, ‘ I said. I’m not leaving until that shower is running and steam is pouring out.’

‘I’ll shower. After you leave.’

‘And you’ll run it lukewarm, I know. Get up, get those trousers off, get into that shower. While you’re showering, I’ll fetch your breakfast tray. There is just enough time before they shut down the galley to set up for lunch… so quit wasting time. Please!’

…………….

I did turn it up hot, though it durn near kilt poor old Alex. But I left it hot until the nerve ends seemed cauterized – then suddenly switched it to cold, and screamed.

I let it stay cold until it no longer felt cold, then shut.It off and -dried down, having opened the door to let out the moisture-charged air. I stepped out into the room… and suddenly realized that I felt wonderful. No headache. No feeling that the world is ending at noon. No stomach queasies. Just hunger. Alex, you must never get drunk again… but if you do, you must do exactly what Margrethe tells you to. You’ve got a smart head on her shoulders, boy – appreciate it.

…………….

‘You were right about the sauna-type shower,’ I told her. ‘It was just what the doctor ordered. Or the nurse, I should say.’

‘I know, it’s what my grandmother used to do for my grandfather.’

……………..
Anyway, when I first heard of CT, I had flashback of this book I read before so I took the book out of my book library and scanned the page for this and I was like ah…

Well… it’s almost like CT or whatever… instead of starting with hot shower… Your body temp tends to be above 80° then you step into cold water… but I do find doing what above did… first hot water then turn on cold water and slowly turn down hot water till it send shiver down your spine…. W00T!

Of course I always take cold shower during summer here in Tucson, AZ even if the temp inside my apt is at 70° air chilled

anyway here are some links touting the benefit of cold bath or shower;

Dr Kruse, I have been having cold showers for 8 weeks, a cold bath every week for 4 weeks. Just started having 3 cold baths for 30 minutes for the last two weeks. I am 5′ 9″ and 140lbs. I have been following Art’s NED for 18 months. For the last 8 weeks I have consumed a fish meal for 4 days a week. Also for the last 8 weeks I have eaten breakfast (which I always skipped) , skip lunch have an evening meal then have my scheduled cold bath. I am getting better body definition, but I still suffer from constipation intermittently, and my stool is normally ranked 1, 2 or 3. What can I do to help with this? When I take my body temperature it records at the lower end. I am guessing with all the CT I am doing that is normal?

@Rayblue What I do to solve this is eat 99% pure cacao chocolate because of its Magnesium content. Since I eat it for the resveratrol and Mg content I have no BM issues. I know Robb Wolf like Natural Calm but I like real food better for this, that activates the Ancient Pathway too. I also will sneak some Kimchee into my Kalifornia burger recipe if my stools are too hard to help but that has not been an issue in quite some time.

hi Jack, i accidentally forgot to take a breath when i swam my first length at the pool yesterday. decided i didn’t need to breath more than once a length for the rest of my session. also can comfortably swim butterfly again. that was my first time swimming lengths in 18 months. still only doing weights once a weeks as my only physical training. 6 months ketopaleo + 6 weeks of CT and I am already seeing performance benefits

The traditional Inuit are both cold adapted and live on a ketogenic Paleo diet. Yet they don’t seem to live that long on average. Some on PH and other sites say that the extreme cold conditions (i.e. sleeping on an igloo) are why. So are you saying they would live even SHORTER if they did VLC and lived in a centrally heated house? Or are there other factors (i.e. healthcare) you think that muddle this observation? Or maybe we should have SOME cold adaptation but shouldn’t just live in the Arctic? some sort of middle ground?

@DanielHan I wish Mitch Baird would weigh in here…….he is is an descendant of these people……their experience is documented by their shaman. I spoke to him at Paleo fx and her recount of their history fits perfectly with my theory. Since 1950 they have eaten a western diet…….the best written accounts of their longevity and disease free life was from Albert Schweitzer in the early 20th century. People on PH have no clue what they are talking about. Dan, I am not making the point we should live in the Arctic. I am saying we have two biochemistries. One for warm and one for cold. Cold is the primordial default and we are blinded to it because of the way we evolved. Since we can control our environment, once you cold adapt, what you have been blind to magically appears. And the evidence of that pathway is found in the abilities of certain known things we have observed in our modern world……Sherpa’s, Armstrong, Phelps, NASA astronauts, why organs save best on ices, Wim Hof abilities, and why neurosurgeons can have surgery without pain are but a few……….There are quite a few more……..the fact that this happens needs to be explained because it is not found in any text book of biochemistry written today. The life we are finding at the bottom of polar seas has many forms of life who existence also is not explainable by modern biochemistry. I think i can explain why biology can adapt to it. The reason is Factor X.

@Jack,. So. Here is my shot at factor x thus far….it lies within the following statement :
“One way in which enzymatic catalysis proceeds is by stabilizing the transition state through electrostatics. By lowering the energy of the transition state, it allows a greater population of the starting material to attain the energy needed to overcome the transition energy and proceed to product.”

So i need to connect electrostatics to the reason “why the human brain was naturally selected”

A few other bread crumbs you dropped in the blog that I’m trying to tie in with this …..
Leptin & receptor is an electron counting system,
Omega 3 aids in signaling efficiency,
“nervous systems were adapted to remain insensate to pain”,
3 references to “polar^ (this is a stretch as it may just be reference to cold regions and not electromagnetic polar region),
Vasper uses grounding.

Or maybe Factor X is a Yeti.

PS: i truly hope eNOS trumps SCN… I CT’d tonight, but I am writing this on my phone in bed at 12:45am.

If you recall, during the initial detox phase of CT, my HSCRP went from <0.5 to 5.0. Weight loss slowed than stalled by the 2nd to 3rd week. Could the increased CRP from the detox temporarily slow/stall weight loss? I’m asking because my symptoms have now abated and by week 5 (last week), I lost 2lbs, and this week I dropped 4lbs–so it seems to be accelerating. DHEA must be increasing again b/c my sleep has been off and on–yet the weight is dropping faster again.

Also, on the zeltiq…I noticed that when they do a session, it takes 8 weeks to see the results and for the body to clear all the debris out. Could the inflammatory response from the zeltiq delay the loss be working similar to the detox causing more inflammation temporarily delaying fat loss and apotosis until at least the liver can up regulate toxin clearance?

Thanks a lot.

(P.S. wife has gone gluten free and doing CT too. She likes her cold baths…can’t wait to see if it fixes her bum).

@Beng the results of Zeltiq pattern home based CT to a T. The process is identical the only difference is the time factor. Zeltiq is using metal at a lower temp to get the effect in 6-8 weeks. CT uses the neurologic system to get the effect slowly as time evolves just as mother nature intended it to as the season vary. The more off balance you are from optimal the longer it will take to get there. Any spike in HS CRP slows all weight loss…….but it is a speed bump in this process and it is also why you must sustain through the affect otherwise you lose the benefit. You are a perfect example of this.

I’m intrigued enough to start doing CT. So far I did four sessions using full body immersion in a cold bath.

My question: I had a large rise in blood pressure after the 3rd and 4th sessions and maybe also the first two, I didn’t check. BP went from my normal 130/70 to about 180/90 immediately after session, and persisted until my torso was fully warmed up. About an hour after 4th session, I took a hot shower, and my BP immediately returned to normal. (1) Is this effect expected? (2) Is it safe?

I presume the BP increase was due to increased vascular resistance as my peripheral blood vessels constricted to preserve my core temperature. My core temperature didn’t drop below 98.1 deg. I tend to think it is safe, because I also have a similar rise in BP when doing resistance exercise, and my vascular system is basically healthy. I think it is only long-term high BP that is dangerous.

FYI, the 4 sessions were (1) 30 min at 67 deg, (2) 20 min at 65 deg, (3) 30 min at 60 deg, (4) 40 min at 58 deg. I’m increasing the time and lowering the temperature slowly to be on the safe side. Other than the initial shock of getting into the water, these sessions were not uncomfortable, although I started to shiver 5-10 minutes before ending the last two sessions.

Okay thanks for explaining, makes good sense. I will continue to cold adapt with ice/cold water baths. I didn’t know the Inuit data was from the 20th century. Those people on a western diet (and my ancestors who are Mongolian herders) suffer the most today. It explains why I can be morbidly obese as few asians are.

@Brenda This can be many things, but it can be a sign of something wrong with the conduction system of your heart secondary to higher levels of cytokines. It can also be a sign of visceral fat in the hear that classically shows up more often in those with sleep apnea. I think it would be prudent to check with your cardiologist. It may just be that you have a a poor 06/3 ratio as well.

hi dr.k, is CT good at shredding only subcutaneous fat, or does it shred visceral fat as well? zeltiq is only for subcutaneous fat, i believe.

also, i get nervous seeing a lot of posts here with people having strange reactions to CT. if ct goes mainstream, who will be available to answer all their questions? you would need to develop something like a trouble shooting guide based on labs that either lay people could use, or their doctors. if CT blows up and lots of people start to use it, you will not have time to answer everyones questions when they get a weird, unexpected (to them) reaction fromCT.

@V I have a blog in que about this…..But honestly CT protocol is so simple and so few issues……they are mostly related to toxing detox or doing the protocol wrong. If you stick on protocol you will be fine. CT is best for visceral fat shredding. I have heard that Zeltiq works differently from critics and it makes me laugh. The clinicians who discovered Zeltiq do not even know how it works. They published that too in 2008.

also, as for factor x, i think you mentioned before somewhere a population bottleneck during an ice age that for forced a mammal (mammals?) into the sea in search of food. is that factor x? weren’t whales land-based animals before and then they adapted to live in the ocean?

I have switched from baths and showers to entirely showers. On days where I would soak in 48 deg water for 20 minutes I could never sleep more than 3 or so hours; always in the same pattern: fall asleep after 2 hours for 2 hours then lie awake until 7am and then fall asleep for another hour. Taking 10-15 minutes showers @ 41 degs in the morning, I sleep almost all night albeit with a couple spells of wakefulness.
My tolerance for cold is quite high. I will be outside in t-shirt and shorts while others have winter coats, hats and gloves on.
Testosterone is still low, but I am getting some signs this is improving.
One thing I have noticed is that after a cold bath I am flexible as a yogi. I do not get this increased flexibility after a shower.

I eagerly look forward to each new blog post, and love reading about how others are cold adapting. This is awesome!

@Jack – Quick question: How do you know the difference between urticaria and a detox rash? The rash I have is about the level of my navel but more outwards toward the love handle region more on both sides. It itches like crazy and can be warm to the touch. I only seem to have it in this area though. Started off as individual bumps but those grew and sort of merged more. Still individual bumps, but the entire area is red.

@The Kid The timing is the key……Cold urticaria happens as soon as the ice makes contact with the skin. Its a very quick reaction. The toxin dump occurs as the fat cells are emptied out slowly over time.

@Jack – OK, one more stab at Factor X or at least the concepts surrounding it. On March 10, 2012 Doug McGuff mentioned barometric pressure and related clinical conditions he sees as an ER doc. He mentions hyperventilation, but not in the context of it being Factor X. I would like to submit hyperventilation as Factor X now based on the following (assuming no one has mentioned this already):

There is some very unique physiology that happens related to shallow water blackout. You mention our ancestors having to go to the cold waters to get at a rich Omega 3 source. That means diving. That means the mammalian dive reflex.

I think that you have somehow reaped the benefits of the cascade that leads to Shallow Water Blackout while avoiding the blackout itself. I will bet that you are able to avoid the blackout because certain physiology related to the cold temperatures.

A 2nd grader would know about Factor X because of the so-called “Fainting Game.”

The aforementioned article mentions dramatically reduced heart rate, and adaptations to the spleen, oxygen delivery and blood chemistry related to oxygen utilization, all of which I am assuming you have found lead to sped up epigenetic benefits when coupled with cold.

The article mentions Japanese pearl divers and their “mild hyperventilation.” I would assume the key here is “mild” because too much hyperventilation is obviously dangerous. They purse their lips to ensure that they don’t go too far.

TheKid, I asked earlier if Factor X had anything to do with the cranial nerves and Jack said no. The vagus, which is cranial nerve 10, is partially affected by breathing. So, I doubt it has much to do with breathing. I was initially thinking it had something to do with the valsalva maneuver or something like that but it appears I’m looking at the wrong clues. I thought the evolutionary event was the bottleneck that occured following the Toba catastrophe and the answer could be found somewhere in that mess (I was thinking sulfur/sulfate), but apparently I’m off base there too. Amd don’t get me started with polyvagal theory! Anyway, I’m off to look for some better clues. Cheers.

@Jack – Since starting CT, I have been noticing that at night I heat up, typically an hour or two after dinner. My hands often get warmer and my ears get warm and red. You’ve previously said this is normal. HOWEVER, I have noticed that actually, it is mostly my left ear that gets warm and red. My right ear, not so muc. In fact, not very much. Should I be concerned?

Note: Last year I had an ultrasound on my carotids and they showed some thickening. My CW doctor said it was just aging. Your “Biologic Concrete” blog suggests otherwise. I was worried it is a blood flow problem; and indeed, if I touch both my carotids simultaneously, I think I feel a weaker pulse on the right, the side of the ear that is cooler. Any thoughts?

Jodi, did you get that figure from a national geographic site? It doesn’t look like they are taking about the Sherpas here, but the people of the bigger region. Also, it insinuates violence, oppression and extreme poverty are to blame. I too would like to know more details about the Sherpas lifespans though.

@Jodi, those age estimates also factor high infant mortality and particularly dangerous lifestyles. (If you’ve ever hitch-hiked internationally or taken “public” transport in 3rd World locales, you know what I mean.

I’ve “nearly died” multiple times due to road conditions and bus drivers who routinely use amphetamines to work 36 hours straight.) In my crazy worldwide travels in the rural mountains and jungles of the world, I was shocked by the vigor and mental strength in the elderly. (I’d draw the line at +80 for elder. Anything under that is really “middle aged”.) I rarely saw aging as we see it in the US. This is one of the things that made me question why I felt so healthy every time I left the US.

There IS something happening “here” in Western cultures…but you need to get out of the U.S. and LIVE, WORK, and EMBRACE the local life, lived in foreign lands, as we did decades ago, in order to get a minor glimpse of where we went wrong.

If you subtract alcohol from the equation, many of these cultures would have life expectancies in the +80/yrs. It was shocking for me to see the impact of home-brew in impoverished areas of S. America, Russia, and South East Asia. Women seemed to easily live happily into old age, while many men died in their 50s. (Go to the W.H.O site and look at age expectancy by sex.) What we see in these reports are averages, which honestly tell us nothing.

You have to dig into the details to get to the truth…hence so many are still stuck in S.A.D. I mean, honestly, it makes sense that if you subtract fat, you’d get skinny, right? Oh, how wrong they’ve been!!!!

I made a break through with my CT today!! I was able to do a full submerge in the tub. I of course was a bit extra shiver-y when I got out, but warmed up about 15 mins. I am HOT right now and my face is radiating heat. Haha! I am finally starting to get cold adapted too!! (This is even after noticeable changes too…but like you said, maximum effects are still noticed 24-38 months later: I’m 1.5 months in…:-D

Thanks again Dr. K: Post Leptin Rx (keto seafood) + CT is a MIRACLE! (P.S. I also do Bulletproof coffee too lately (well I use tea for the moment). That is also super great for me.

p.s. I still always sleep in a nice cold room from the window being open and it going a bit below 0 over nights. Just feels SO good and refreshing! My next step for that will be to use a lighter blanket. (I do sleep in shorts and tank).

TheKid said “The aforementioned article mentions dramatically reduced heart rate, and adaptations to the spleen, oxygen delivery and blood chemistry related to oxygen utilization, all of which I am assuming you have found lead to sped up epigenetic benefits when coupled with cold.

The article mentions Japanese pearl divers and their “mild hyperventilation.” I would assume the key here is “mild” because too much hyperventilation is obviously dangerous. They purse their lips to ensure that they don’t go too far.”

I’m not really doing CT beyond finishing a shower with cold water, but i’ve noticed times at night when i seem not to know when to breathe, like my regulation of oxygen is messed up. i never mentioned it because i assumed it was due to perimenopause as some women report feeling like that. maybe it is just perimenopause. i hate that feeling. and i used to get panicky, but now i just wait it out and just don’t worry about breathing when i have this kind of episode. i figure i’ll take a breath when i really need it.

@v interesting you should mention your ‘regulation of oxygen is messed up.’ I’ve been doing the cool shower water dip in the tub with 70 degree water so it’s not quite as stringent as some. I’ve interspersed that with going up to 10,000 feet 2x a week. The barimetric pressure is a lot less on the Mtn. I noticed my breathing was messed up too. If I took a few deep breaths at my level 5200 ft. I would get really dizzy and light headed. If I took some deep breaths up on top i would get really dizzy too. I’m practicing singing and it’s hard to know how much of a breath to take so I don’t feel like I’m going to pass out. I went up last on 4-1, and will go up again tomorrow 4-7. Then they are closed for maintenance for the next 2 weeks and I have about 5 weeks of traveling some of which will be in mountainous regions though. I guess you are saying to relax with the breath taking part. I’ve had to cut down on some of this because of the temporary work load. Maybe some magic will happen in the cardiovascular system as it catches up with what I’ve been doing. Thanks to you and ‘TheKid’ for keeping going.

I live in Denver at 5280 feet. If I wanted to add high altitude to the equation how far up should I go, for how long, and for how often? It takes 20 minutes to get into the mountains from Denver. At 14000 feet I get head and neck aches and a bit of the altitude sickness, air hunger, and am exhausted at the end of the day. I can get up to 10580 feet which is the trailhead for Mt Evans(14K+ feet). Colorado has many 14teeners but Mt Evans is the only one that I know of that one can drive to the top. Can’t get to the top of Mt. Evans till after Memorial Day when the snow is finally gone.

I figured you were doing something with altitude. Having used a altitude tent for athletic training on and off since the mid-90s I can tell it you it does improve performance. For much of that of time I lived at sea Level, but with the tent I could sleep at 8-15,000ft. It allowed me to race effectively at altitude. I’m combining the tent now with CT and my own Vasper type setup and looking forward to the results.

@Susan and Rick. glad to know there are others interested in altitude. I’ve discovered that some doing training use the machines for 60 to 90 minutes at a time. So I travel from 5200 feet to 10,000 feet and stay there for that amount of time. Dr K said to eat protein and fat before going up and of course to drink water. That has helped a lot.

Sorry I’m off topic but I wondered if your wife uses ice (on back)or cold hydrotherapy(on legs)for her horse’s back injury. I have a horse with possible spine fracture and can find very little relevant science on cold therapy or feed in relation to bone repair for animals.

@Jack – I am doing a biohack of sorts myself. I mentioned before that animals don’t “work out,” yet they perform just fine. And you point to polar bears being physically capable post-hibernation (by the way, I think I read that only females hibernate. What about the males?)

Because I was so overtrained, I stopped exercise altogether and continued with the Leptin Rx and started CT as well.

Do you consider exercise necessary for optimal health or should diet and CT pretty much take care of that? I know that you suggest specific exercise a la Mark Sission once signs of LS are there. But what if I don’t exercise? Would that be a problem? Or should I start lifting some heavy things?

@The Kid Let me be directionally accurate here……..all polar bears have to get fat in the spring and summer on foods mother nature provides to it and begin to to get IR then they den. If they do not get fat they wont survive the brutal polar winters. Under ground they spend 4 months in the freezing cold without a lot of food, water, or potty time. They emerge in the spring shredded of fat and have the largest muscle mass they have all year. (Yes, I checked this with the polar bear biologist in Alaska last year) Most modern humans believe that to shred fat and get big muscles they need exercise. The polar bear is a living example that we do not. There are many examples of this in wild animals as well besides the polar bears. That means that this biochemistry exists. But you wont find mention of it in a modern human biochemistry book. So you need to ask WHY?

What do humans and polar bears have in common? They are eutherian mammals. What do they not have in common? One lives by the rules of Mother Nature in fall and winter and the other one creates a constant summer in its house. Mother Nature makes the “smarter” of the two pay a toll for ignoring her.

Old age, to the unlearned, is winter; to the learned, it’s harvest time. -Yiddish proverb most modern hominids forgot.

@TheKid thanks, I googled polar bears. This seems to be the consensus:http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/polar-bears/faq#q15
Do polar bears hibernate?
Not in the strict sense of the word. True hibernators experience a marked drop in heart rate and body temperature and generally stay for a long period in a den. Polar bears instead enter a state of walking hibernation where their metabolism slows. Only pregnant polar bears enter a den, give birth, and emerge three months later.

It has even been shown in primates. But it appears some of the “smart critics” out there did not know it either.

I used polar bears as an example in the podcast because they are eutherian mammals and they live in the cold. The same could be said for a mountain lion in yellowstone who does not den (used this in the Paleo Summit example with Sean Croxton)……..he is leanest in the winter due to lack of food and to the cold. Humans are fattest int he winter because this is when corporations try to sell us exercise equipment for January 1st resolutions that we lose willpower to execute on by January 15th. The point is made to be directionally accurate and not 100% infalliable. Once you realize how most eutherian mammals deal with cold and look at us there is a drasitic difference. That is the ultimate point many choose to gloss over. That keeps it in our blind spot.

Terry F said: ” I noticed my breathing was messed up too. If I took a few deep breaths at my level 5200 ft. I would get really dizzy and light headed. If I took some deep breaths up on top i would get really dizzy too. I’m practicing singing and it’s hard to know how much of a breath to take so I don’t feel like I’m going to pass out. I went up last on 4-1, and will go up again tomorrow 4-7. Then they are closed for maintenance for the next 2 weeks and I have about 5 weeks of traveling some of which will be in mountainous regions though. I guess you are saying to relax with the breath taking part. I’ve had to cut down on some of this because of the temporary work load. Maybe some magic will happen in the cardiovascular system as it catches up with what I’ve been doing. Thanks to you and ‘TheKid’ for keeping going.”

Terry, my discomfort with breathing came in the middle of the night and had nothing to do with altitude. i didn’t feel dizzy either. it will be interesting to see if dr. k has anything to add. this is all a big experiment, so a lot of these reactions probably haven’t been seen before. like dr. k said in a previous post, there is not a lot of data on this.

@Dr K thanks for your quick reply..whenever a patient presents with anxiety/panic, as a neurosurgeon I hope you agree that there is a specific neural malfunctioning happening..not an “emotional” cause..I hope ct helps me to heal my brain

@Vince neurosurgeons always think neural wiring……the shrinks and psychologist are the professionals who default to emotions. For us emotions are the last choice when we really do not know and do not want to tell we do not know. Most docs use the genetic explanation as their get of jail free card too for many modern diseases instead of just saying they do not know.

@Jack – Polar bears are very interesting. I read elsewhere that they are the only bears that have the ability to downregulate their metabolisms AT ANY TIME OF YEAR in the absence of a food source. Apparently other bears, when deprived of food, just starve.

Additionally, I read, I think at Polar Bears Interntaional, that polar bears show much greater resistence to sickness, although some do tend to carry trichinosis. So I am assuming they have upregulated immune systems.

@The Kid the issue with polar bears is that they consume far fewer calories in the cold then at any other time in year. CT -4 shows that in all mammals cold selects for calorie restriction naturally as Mother Nature intended. Humans break this rule routinely. This is why ad companies make tons of money off january first exercise ads. This also fits the Ancient Pathway and is another example of how humans differ because of their choices. The “soul of biology” knows how to heal itself, the main challenge to success is to learn to silence the mind simultaneously. When I was researching polar animals I was fortunate to know a marine biologist up in Alaska who works for the US government. He says polar animals in the wild are the most hearty animals he has ever seen and rarely get ill unless man affects their habitats.

@Jack – The reason I asked about exercise, is because I remember stumbling upon our favorite Bulletproof Exec, Dave Asprey, several months ago. He had a pick of him looking quite fit, along with the claim that he did not exercise. That piqued my interest and your protocols seems to explain how that is possible.

Have you talked with Dave about his body composition and training, or rather, lack thereof?

@The Kid Dave and I are now going to do some things together. We had a long talk over at Paleo fx and his ideas and mine fit nicely. He was real intrigued by some of what I am doing and I love his hacks on the brain. My hacks are a bit extreme but I am trying to help people who are quite sick and ill while Dave is pushing human performance. I am hoping Dave, myself, Ray Cronise and Wim Hof can form a company soon to show the world just what is possible with CT. That is my vision.

Are you aware of chronic virus infections presenting adversely when doing CT? Two times now, months apart, I have gotten very sick with swollen tonsils (very large, red, no puss) almost within 4 hours of doing moderate CT, just cold shower for around 10 minutes with sore joints the next day. I stopped after only one attempt in each case and do not know what will happen if I push on.

I have always suspected I harbor chronic virus of some type because I can get a cold in the middle of summer just by sleeping under an open winter or by going outside for a short time in the winter without any coat.

I have been Rob Wolf paleo for two years now, very lean, etc but what is the possibility I cannot CT because of chronic infections?

Incidentally, the night of the 2nd CT session, after having developed severely enlarged tonsil afterwards, I had heavy night sweats and felt better in the morning except for very bad joint pain.

Does CT give chronic virus or bacterial infections (some people are chronic strep carriers for instance) a leg up to proliferate? Jack, thanks for you help.

@Jerry if the pathogen is buried with fatty tissue I think it can become active once the fat cells are emptied. But that also means that for some reason your immune system is not idea either. I think you should look into testing yourself. Dr. Shoemaker’s work on Lyme might stimulate some of your own detective work here. To me clearing it from your fat cells make sense as long as you have a plan to get it from your body. Maybe when you toxin dump you can run some serum tests to see what you really have. An ID doctor might be very helpful if you do this on yourself.

It seems the medical establishment today views the human body as an island, and that it is their role as physicians to provide us humans with the means to protect us from “potential harmful outside forces”ie: pathogens, fat consumption etc. Thus what happens is the prescription of antibiotics, statins etc. to protect us. But never is their an interest in building our bodies own ability to handle whatever is thrown at it. That is why you are so different than all the other MD’s.

Pathogens are everywhere we live. I would guess many humans are colonized with harmful pathogens, but just not activated. It is when they become immunity suppressed that they are activated.

@Conan Modern medicine has forgotten when we protect the terrain first and foremost with a good defense using a proper diet we might not need the things modern man thinks to defend ourselves. MRSA is a man made bacteria……and It appears that cold is a worthy adversary for it. This is helpful information for me as a surgeon.

Yep. Conventional medical treatment has gotten me where I am today along with 50 some years of the SAD diet. With my RA I was on many of the trials for the new drugs like Enbrel, the TNF inhibitors and continued them after they were approved drugs which eventually trashed my immune system. Throughout the trials my doc kept feeding me antibiotics & antifungals which in hindsight meant the trial stats looked better than they should because the antibiotics kept the infection rates down. After drugs approved no more antibiotics & antifungals and voila, systemic fungal infection to the point of near death. Then on to a better trial for a drug being tested for RA, one recently approved and again, plied with antibiotics and antifungals during trial phase and after approval not so much but still I became “colonized” with pseudomonis ariginosa graham negative bacteria which damaged my lungs to the point CT scans show severe lung damage normally found in poor 3rd world situations without proper nutrition, etc. So that my oxygen levels when walking or upon exertion drop at time to such low levels that I require oxygen. Resting rate averages 94-95, bad day walking around dropping to 84 worst case. So yes, when doing stuff, need oxygen stuck up my nose on bad days, Sitting around, nope. Kinda sucks.

Dr. Kruse,
You are right about the doctors and the get out of jail free card. I hate it when people won’t say they don’t know. The smartest people I’ve ever met say they don’t know things all the time. Trying figure out the questions to ask makes you smart (IMO). You could still be wrong, but if you are trying to find the answer, you can’t ask for more.

Quickly, last lung scan showed many nodules and last sputum tests showed aspergillis, itraconazole is a nasty, nasty drug and I am so tired of taking drugs! Since going strict completely in January I am not on ANY for my RA and am not too keen on doing any. But should I take the antifungals one last time? I do feel much better than I have for years and years

How can I step up my CT since I cannot get in and out of the bath without assistance due to multiple joint replacements? My best CT time has been early dawn Am when temps are down in tahe 50s but it is now reaching 60 –and summer is upon us here 90 degrees today …. Cost too much to run ac. Can we purchase cold compression suits anywhere too?

@Cecile That fungus is a nasty one. But the status of your immune system maybe more important. Do you have a recent HS CRP or Vit D level form your doc? CT will help……but if your immunocompromised ( I am assuming you are by the history you gave) I think you need to be careful not using the antifungals. If your feeling well and the D levels are high and HS CRP low you might be able to avoid them. What has your ID doc said?

A friend of ours has RA for ten years in her hands. She is an avid canvas painter…but recently she could no longer even hold a paintbrush. She became very depressed. She is 80 years old. The medical community had given up on her completely. I started her on a ketogenic diet and have had her dipping only her hands in ice water for a month. She is now back to painting 5 hours a day without pain.

There is hope for you, Cecile

I am convinced that the cold will heal most ills. Do as much as you can of CT for as long as you can.

Once you drive those fungi and toxins out of your fat cells you will be a new woman.

Vit D level was 34 last October. Have stepped up to 3000 per day and hoping to have them optimal next testing. My ID doc was not ecstatic about my not choosing to continue (took it for 5 days) the itraconazole due to bad side effects but went along. Am to get back ASAP if my sputum production gets worse. Have a dx for many, many blood tests that you have suggested and will go next week. The one that my primary didn’t put down was for the rT3 when I specifically asked for it. She checked: comprehensive metabolic, added homocysteine, checked lipid panel 80061, folic acid, CRP HS, estrogen, estrodial, CBC 85025, Glycohemoglobin 83036, progesterone, DHEA, TSH 84443, free T4, Vit B 12, Vit D 25, urines UA reflex to C&S, Microalbumin, then microbiology: prolactin, FSH, LHASA.

Should I just check the Total t3 84480 box myself before going into the lab? Will those just about cover all we need to know? Many, many, thanks, I bow low.

@v, yes, I was just referring to the ‘messed up breathing’ part from what ever source. where ever it comes from I thought your idea to relax and not panic about it and let your body take it’s own breath whether it’s altitude or middle of the night sea level. thanks

Dr K saw your reply at 204. I don’t want to wait until 2014 when the mtn is right outside my door today! I bought a pulse oximeter to find out what is going on. I have a BG meter too. However, since I’ve been eating properly I may not need it. I’m doing some of my breath exercises and plan on experimenting with the different types. Things are moving along. Seems you are in your planning stages on this so I will keep on keeping on. I think I will have to find a retired Sherpa to give me some advice in the meantime. LOL. Thanks for giving me this idea having a great time.

@ Dexter thank you for the encouragement. My RA has affected every joint in my body and when I started CT in earnest it was hard to sit outside in 45 – 55 degrees in my undies for hours but now I can’t wait to get outside, problem is it is warming up and I will have to get more inventive like most everyone here. The CT immediately shuts down any joint pain and it has been been such a relief since I have always refused to take pain meds stronger than aspirin or Tylenol.

Dr. Kruse I will up my D to 5000 daily and 2 weeks ago I started myself on K2 5mg day. I have been struggling trying to eat the 9 cups of greenery per Terry Wahls in fact 9 cups is pretty impossible if I am to get in my BAB. I have read everything on your site and many posts more than once since there is so much to ingest and learn from all of them I am certain I will read them over until I understand fully.

I’m thinking I should just check the total t3 box off On the lab sheet myself . What is the box for the omega 6/3 ratio since I forgot to ask for that’s one?

@Cecile 5000 IU for you is not going to cut it. As for the greens…….put them in a vitamin and make sauces of them to decrease the amount and increase the surface area for you to absorb them……this is what I tell all my neurodegenerative patients to do.

Terry F, I wonder why dr. k didn’t comment about the breathing and oxygen dysregulation? maybe because it is not in his experience. if i had problems with breathing a lot instead of once in a blue moon like i do now, i would keep researching it and try to find the answer. professor de vany has a supplement out which i haven’t tried, but anyway, he made the comment that it contained a lot of vitamin c cuz it is needed for hormonal signalling. maybe with keto paleo you are not getting enough vita c. just talking as a layman who is not 40 % seafood paleo and just doing cold rinses after showers.

@Cecile, With you at 34 ng/ml Vit D3 being woefully inadequate, you need to be taking at least 25000IU/day for a month to boost your immune system quickly along with the CT. Then back down to 10000 a day for another month then test the D3 level. Dr K wants his patients to be 70 to 100ng/ml.

Regarding Reverse T3 and T3…get them both taken and read http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com about what the optimal T3/RT3 ratio is. Should be around 20. The units need to be the same to divide T3 by RT3.

@v thanks for the Vit C info. I had run out of it and a few days ago I got a new supply. Today I went up the mtn and did not have the dizziness problem either up or down Interesting, hormone signaling eh? Also see my comment at 236. Many thanks for your info.

@Jack – Help me understand something better. Your approaches leverage neuroplasticity. We can switch from our current neuroendocrine responses to the proper neuroendocrine responses that will place our bodies back into the homeostatic balance nature intended.

My concern is “neuroendocrine memory.” Once we reset our Leptin and successfully cold adapt, have we actually reset the balance of the two neuroendrine pathways we’re dealing with here (insulin resistance vs. fat burning)? Or will the years of non-optimal living always make the insulin resistance pathway “hyper-sensitive?” And amongst the formerly metabolically broken, will that mean it will be necessary to constantly reassert the optimal path through diet and cold for fear of recidivism? And could this be the reason so many people fall back into weight gain and health problems after losing large amounts of weight? Or do your protocols actually fully reset the sensitivities of the pathways and allow for fully normal responses to dietary triggers such as increased amounts of carbohydrate?

I am wondering also whether you personally, after a summer of carbing at a higher level, have difficulty returning to the fat burning pathway? Is it a struggle for you?

And more importantly, is it a struggle in nature for animals that experience winter? I mean, does a bear or squirrel, all nice and fat and ready for winter, “feel” carb carvings once their carb sources are gone? This brings me back to an earlier question about bears whose habitats overlap with human development, thus making them garbage dump foragers. Do such bears continue to be driven to carb up in winter because of the often readily available carbs found in human garbage?

@The Kid listen to my recent podcast with the fatburningman.com I say in this podcast that when we confuse the brain it defaults to trying to figure out what in the world is going on by rewiring. So no matter what your neural memory is it can be altered. We learned this biologic fact in the cochlea implant trials. Go listen to the podcast and reflect on what I said there and here and then think about what you asked me.

thekid said: “And amongst the formerly metabolically broken, will that mean it will be necessary to constantly reassert the optimal path through diet and cold for fear of recidivism?”

i think dr. k said if you are not trying to repair a neolithic disease and your telomeres are in good shape, you still have to do CT in fall and winter. so yes, we do have to “constantly reassert the optimal path through diet and cold for fear of recidivism”.

The kids and hubby went to the lake yesterday and the ice was off so they all jumped in after the work was done. 10 year old also took a cold shower as there was no hot water yet. She said wasn’t bad after she got numb. They would not have done this if they hadn’t seen me and hubby do CT and talk about it. 15 year old did CT 2 x last week before track practice. They are listening.

@Susan if you liked that just wait til you hear my opening speech at Paleo fx………this podcast was just an appetizer for that speech. Abel is a great interviewer……I just did not know we were on the record so early……i dropped too many expletives for my liking.

ok, you mentioned that whales are our “deep” ancestors. freetheanimal man mentioned that fans of “deep evolution” would be interested in the X factor. and i have heard professor de vany speak often of deep evolution. so a little later on today i am going to google around for books of deep evolution and also look at your facebook page.

ps it’s funny how people look at you and have a mirror onto themselves. i believe that is called ‘projection’. i look at your talk at TED and see someone who just wants to help people. that is what i laser in on. freetheanimal man looks at you and sees someone like himself- not afraid to anger people, self-confident, wanting a reaction. this leads me to the conclusion that we don’t know anything. the bottom line is what you said at devany’s site. what people really care about is results.

@V it is……and I get them. The problem is people dont like how I do it. The people your getting ready to see in the next few blog posts however feel a lot differently about my methods. When you see how I parleyed my bio hack into results……well I’ll let you decide who is nuts or not.

@Dr. Kruse.. This isn’t related to Ct, but I was wondering if you could still help me with this question.

I have Keratosis Pilaris and am trying to find a nutritional connection, but am having a hard time as I don’t have a science background at all. I know you have said that you have not seen this in your patients before. Though I wonder if maybe you just haven’t noticed as it is a skin condition that is merely cosmetic. Seems that about 40% of adults have it which is quite a bit.

Anyways here is how it happens for reference from wikipedia:

“Keratosis pilaris occurs when the human body produces excess keratin, a natural protein in the skin. The excess keratin, which is cream colored, surrounds and entraps the hair follicles in the pore. This causes the formation of hard plugs (process known as hyperkeratinization). Bearing only cosmetic consequence, the condition most often appears as a proliferation of tiny hard bumps that are seldom sore or itchy. Though people with keratosis pilaris experience this condition year-round, it is during the colder months, when moisture levels in the air are lower, that the problem can become exacerbated and the goose bumps are apt to look and feel more pronounced in color and texture.
Many KP bumps contain an ingrown hair that has coiled. This is a result of the keratinized skin’s “capping off” the hair follicle, preventing the hair from exiting. The hair grows encapsulated inside the follicle.”

I’ve been on your protocol for 10 wks and been doing CT for about 4-5 wks now. I haven’t seen any difference so far. Online there are many guesses at causes, but no real answers yet. I feel that it must be related in some way to nutrition, but I don’t know what vitamins/minerals or maybe O6/O3 ratio that affects proteins in the skin and might cause hyperkeritinization. I was thinking VitA seemed the best place to start and have been eating 1 lb of liver for the past few months, but doesn’t seem to change anything yet.

Anyways, I figure there are connections that I can’t seem to see/make because I don’t have the scientific knowledge to start with. I was hoping maybe you could hazard some guesses of where or what I should start looking at to try to figure it out. Thank you for any suggestions you can give.

“It lives entirely in fertile Arctic and sub-Arctic waters, unlike other whales that migrate to feed or reproduce to low latitude waters.”
It outlives the larger Bluewhale which migrates to warm areas each year.

Jeffery Bada found that most of the adult whales were between 20 and 60 years old when they died(caught by Eskimo hunters), but five males were much older. One was 91, one was 135, one 159, one 172, and the oldest whale was 211 years old at the time of its death. That whale, alive during the term of President Clinton, was also gliding slowly and gracefully through the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas when Thomas Jefferson was president.

Bada explained that the method of measuring changes in aspartic acid to determine age has an accuracy range of about 16 percent, which means the 211 year-old bowhead could have been from 177 to 245 years old.

@TruthHunter…….you should see the latest data on great White sharks……even more impressive. They are not mammals but they evolved 420 million years ago and they live predominantly in cold water, feed in mostly cold water and rarely in tropical waters and they swim unreal distances……we know this today from GPS data. They feed in freezing cold and they live very very long lives.

1. My Raynaud’s seems to be getting worse with continued CT. I wear gloves and socks and keep my hands/feet out of the water yet the numbness is becoming more frequent. Any thoughts on why this is happening?

2. Do you believe that CT + keto diet alone can repair hormonal deficiencies or is it necessary to combine with BHRT?

There is a lot of talk here about polar bears loosing a lot of fat after hibernation. I might be missing something here but polar bears have a ton of blubber to deal with frigid temperatures and hibernation. Why would we as humans want to trigger hibernation states? Hibernation also means fat gain. You seem to totally avoid that aspect of hibernation and only talk about weight loss after long cold exposures and a ketogenic diet in winter.

CT is interesting. I have experienced an energy surge after cold exposure. It makes sense that it would affect metabolism since the body needs to work hard to try to maintain a warmer temperature. Wouldn’t the body adapting to cold simulate a state of exercise along with the benefits which would also encourage better sleep and enhanced immunity? Referencing an organ placed on ice to preserve it is a silly argument for CT since that is nothing more than what is going on in our refrigerators.

Can’t help feel that although some interesting ideas, you may be defying evolution rather than help it along. Hibernation in a modern world just doesn’t make sense. CT may just be a means to counteract all the fat gain a hibernation state may bestow upon us.

The human body is wonerfully adaptive. A sherpa’s body learns and evolves to adapt to what is demanded of it. A couch potato’s body fed crap atrophies and diseases. That’s the simple part.

@K I think people are missing the polar bear analogy. It matters little that bears are not true hiberantors but neither are we or our immediate ancestors. It appears however we have the hardwiring in our brains however to still do it. The reason……is what I am getting too……bears are mammals and so are we. And that fact can not be argued. Moreover this entire observation I have made can be explained by epigenetics of mammals. And that is where I am heading. Everyone thinks they know where I am going but they really do not. For now I’ll let them speculate but I think when I show you how some observations lead to some reasoning……and to some experimentation…….and then to some validation of the biologic plausibility……..we’ll see what you all think then.

I’ve been CTing for almost 6 weeks now and am currently doing 20-30 min baths 5-6 times a week in 53 degree water. I’ve also been on the leptin rx for 10 weeks.

In the last few years I’ve noticed my tolerance for heat declining, but it seems to be getting much, much worse lately. Any correlation to the CT or leptin rx?

I find after some meals my face gets cherry red, super flushed and extremely hot to the touch. What’s particularly strange is that sometimes the rest of my body can actually be cold and even have chills, but other times my entire body is heated up.

Have you seen this? Any thoughts on what’s going on? Should I take this as good or bad?? Thanks!

Thanks Doc. Any ideas on what could be causing it then? I know my hormones are low across the board and I’m working on increasing them with CT and your prescribed diet. My hsCRP is low, vit D is good, cholesterol is good. I do have functional hypothyroidism. Anything else you’d target to try to find the root cause of this?

See, K, when Dr. K talks about ‘hibernation’ he doesn’t mean for us to some how go in a cave for Winter and Spring, he’s talking about our condensed ‘hibernation’ called sleep at night. It’s using what modern evolutions our species has done and how to tweak it based on old pathways we have from mammalian time.

I suppose the question I have is regarding more carbs in summer and Fall, in a reset state, to determine what is an appropriate fat gain to prep for the winter? Hopefully it’s nothing too wild of a gain and only minimal (if at all?). (Because maybe you can start to reach IR, but before any major fat %, then the keto diet starts again since it’s already into winter by that time).

Thanks Dr. K! Again, I always say thank you because this experience is such a good thing. Also in relation to how people won’t try your protocols just because they don’t know the direction you take is a bit silly. It’s important to try the experiments on ourselves…we see/experience results for OURSELVES, then we get the cool “Well here is the rest of how it works and here’s my examples”. COOL!

Dr. K, I’m curious about your family member as a navy seal that you mentioned in an underground wellness interview. Did his diet practices and cold adaptation result in better performance (i.e. recovery time, stamina, mental toughness) at BUDs?

I’m an aspiring Spec War guy, is there any advice you have for me relating to my pre BUDs training and BUDs itself?

@josh most people drop out of the Seal training because they cant handle the extreme cold adaptation they do…….but if you train correctly before you get there guess what……it is a breeze. He has had no issues so far that I know of.

Factor X. My thoughts are that it has to do with sleep. Deep levels of sleep and a sort of hibernation. After reset and CT this seems where we make our gains and improvements.
If CT is slowing things down deep sleep compensates by speeding up improvements. The deeper and longer or frequency of this hibernation the better self we become.
Am I on the right track? The link that ties the other stuff together.

Starting to do the CT reset these last few days. I have already been lean, 5-6% BF and pretty strong. I do mostly Paleo and have included IF to my daily or weekly eating style. I have usually skipped breakfast put will start including it ( at times I have been having sleep issues). I have been active most of my life. I love being healthy and working out.
Been battling some small injuries and a bad back and hip muscles that spasm.
Well a few things I have noticed so far. My skin around my muscles have in a way shrink wrapped and I appear more chiseled. The cold hurts I’m not going to lie but afterwords I feel energized. My small aches and injuries have substituted and my back feels like it is finally getting releif. I feel less inflamed. Sleep isn’t coming back yet but I have only been doing it now for 3 days. Building up with cold showers, outside hose downs and ice backs. Been putting ice packs on my back as well.
So far I am loving it… We will see where this will go. I am 48 this month. I’ve always felt younger than that but hey with this I may be back to my twentys and doing back flips again.

Wow…. I just finished an hour long ice bath. It was cold and at the end I was shivering like crazy. My body temperature dropped to around 93 degrees. Is that OK? I notice after doing CT during the day it will get under 95 degrees. Anyway afterwards it took me over an hour to feel comfortably warm again, around 96.5 degrees. I then feel asleep for an hour of the best sleep I have had in a long time. Woke up feeling refreshed. Is this how it works until I get adjusted?

Based on your recommendations for cold therapy, I have been doing some spring swimming in the icy waters of Maine. Water temps are in the low 40’s. I was just interviewed by a New England news station as I came out of the water. Apparently a kayaker died in the water the night before so they were looking for some perspective on how cold the water was. They asked me why I was doing this and I mentioned the benefits of CT and referenced you. That part did not make it into the brief interview though. Thanks for your help! Here is the link: http://www.necn.com/04/16/12/Death-of-kayaker-drawing-concerns-about-/landing_newengland.html?blockID=690688&feedID=10150

This is Mandy from your melasma blog. I am fit and of healthy weight. I don’t want to lose weight in any parts of my body but want to do CT to reduce inflammation in my body and see if it benefits melasma reversal in the long run.

I have been dunking my face in iced water past 1 week. I want to jump straight into cold water tub after another week. Since my purpose is not to lose weight, is it okay for me to just sit in cold water while maintaining skin temperature to 50-55? Clearly, blood won’t flow from the site of high temp to low as entire body will be at the same temperature. But I don’t want to lose any weight with CT.

I also want to skip compression shirt based CT as I find that very cumbersome.

About Dr. Kruse

Dr. Jack Kruse is a respected neurosurgeon and CEO of Optimized Life, a health and wellness company dedicated to helping patients avoid the healthcare burdens we typically encounter as we age. He is a member of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, the Congress of Neurologic Surgeons, and Age Management Medicine Group.